What is balance...and what is it not?

What is balance?

 What does balance mean? In the dictionary it’s defined as…

         ‘a situation in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions’

or

                  ‘to put something in a steady position so that it does not fall.’

Both are important in describing my concept of balanced living. My original PT business at the turn of the century was called motiv8; it was the in-thing at the time to use numbers in place of letters! I was young, keen to inspire people and I was very focused on high energy sessions with lots of encouragement. At my busiest point, I worked 16 hours a day Monday-Friday, 12-16 sessions a day on average, and I often worked Saturday and Sunday too. The 80-100 hour weeks took their toll, with me sometimes cramming in flapjacks or pasta whilst my clients warmed up, just to get some food on board, and often running 10-20 miles a day with clients too. I picked up injuries and eventually burned myself out, becoming completely exhausted. I’d lost my balance.

I learned a lot about my own body from this experience and my clients also helped to educate me through my work with them. I learned that what worked for one person didn’t always work for another, that different things motivate some but completely put others off. I learned that there were so many factors that went into whether someone succeeded or not and that my job was to be a sort of detective, listening out for the things that seemed like they may be important for that person. I also started to understand that each of our perceptions of health, fitness and wellbeing is different and that my job was to help someone achieve theirs rather than push my own or someone else’s belief’s onto them. I learned that exercising hard wasn’t always the best option; in fact I learned that sometimes exercise wasn’t even the best option! Clients who’d had emotional days were exhausted and needed a cup of tea and a chat rather than a workout. I learned that the recommendations for exercise are just guidelines, a framework on which to build. I had one lady who used to do 15-minutes with me every week, not hard but just something. She rarely did anything on her own in the week and a number of the PT’s used to ask me what the point was. I guess in my head the point was, that was what she felt she could do at that time and that something is always better than nothing. What was the alternative? To tell her not to bother doing any exercise at all? Or encourage her and gradually help her improve on it over time?

Through all of these experiences; with my clients and learning how my own body responded to exercise and tiredness and stress, the word ‘balance’ seemed to keep popping up. I’d talk about it in conversations about diet and exercise programmes, about sleep and workload. I started to work on some writing about it, which went on to form the majority of my book The Complete Guide to Weight Loss.

Over the years it developed into a sort of philosophy, with key pillars and principles and when I launched my second business in 2012, there was only one possible name for it. Ever since, I’ve used them to help many people get themselves fitter, healthier, happier and most importantly, stay that way. In that sense, just like the dictionary definition, it is very much about helping you not to fall, and also about how to help you get back to better balance if you do.

So what is it, and what it is not?

Let’s start with what it definitely is not. It most definitely isn’t…

• Based on fads, gimmicks and quick fixes. There’s no 9-day, 21-day, 28-day or 12-week plan that suddenly comes to an end and leaves you wondering, ‘what now?’

• Being on a diet you don’t enjoy, where foods are banned or restricted and you know you won’t stick to it. In fact. it’s not about anything that makes you feel bad or guilty or not worthy.

• Treating foods and drinks as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, they’re neither. Some are worse for us if we have too much and some are better and we should have more of them. Genetics and the situation both impact whether a food is better or worse for you; for example, someone at risk of diabetes needs to eat less high sugar foods, but a Mars Bar becomes a good food 20 miles into a marathon

• Doing exercises that you hate or feel uncomfortable with. There are many ways to get fit and as long as you follow the principles of a balanced routine, you can choose the one that works best for you

• Getting fit or lean at the expense of health. No extremes required here

• One size fits all. As you’ve seen in the previous points, we’re all different, so balance is more about general principles than rules. I’d look incredibly stupid very quickly if I told you that this definitely works and that doesn’t, because one of you out there would be able to provide evidence to the contrary from your own experiences.

Instead, this is what balance is…

It’s based on three key principles…

1) You are the sum of your most frequent recent behaviours

Certain things you should do more often, like exercise and eating your greens, whilst some need doing less, like drinking alcohol or sitting down, if you’re to achieve health, fitness and happiness.

Consistency is key. It’s about doing them day in, day out, as without this your health and fitness starts to fall away, and it’s why making small, gradual changes is better as it means you’re much more likely to stick to them. No behaviours are ‘good’ or ‘bad’, only better or worse. For example, smoking one cigarette isn’t great, but it won’t cause you much long-term harm if you never have another. Foods and drinks aren’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’ either, what’s helpful for one person may not be for another, we know this from the uniqueness of food allergies, as the saying goes ‘one man’s food is another’s poison’ and from how some achieve great success on one type of diet, whilst others find it doesn’t help them at all. As with other behaviours, eating one chocolate bar or cake, or even one occasionally, isn’t the problem, it comes down to the amount we consume and how frequently. All health behaviours sit on a scale, with better or worse alternatives. The aim is simply to do the better ones more often.

The behaviours encompass a holistic approach. For total wellbeing, you need to work on your mindset, nutrition, lifestyle and exercise, which is why I created the ‘think’, ‘eat’, ‘live’ and ‘move’ pillars that underpin the balance approach. Balance always uses the available research to provide information on all of these areas that is considered trustworthy and current best practice, but always ensures that it’s relevant to you, jargon-free and easy-to-understand.

2) You have the power

That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but there is always a way to change your behaviours. That way will be different for everyone and based on your situation, what motivates you and what’s within your capabilities at that time. The balance goal is to act like a sherpa, guiding you towards the right behaviours and helping you to understand the things you need to do to make them happen, but never being too prescriptive or telling you that you must do it this way or that. I know from experience that adults are the biggest children; they don’t do what they’re told! With the right guidance and support though, anyone can achieve better health, fitness and wellbeing.

3) There is no failure, only feedback

As there’s no right or wrong way, there can be no failure, only learning over time. It would be naïve to think with such a wide range of health behaviours and complex lives that the first thing we try will always work. What is absolutely true though is that giving up NEVER works; as you know it’s all about finding a way to carry out the better behaviours more consistently over time, that way lies the path to better balance.

How do you know when you’re well balanced?

Firstly, think of it like a scale, something that you move up and down rather than something that you either have or don’t. If you’re moving further along the scale towards better balance, then you’ll be in a place where:

• you look the way you want to, feel good in yourself, have energy and self-confidence

• both your physical health and mental wellbeing are good and you feel in control, able to maintain it and get back on track should something get in the way

• you sleep well and wake feeling rested and energised on most days

• you have the energy to do the things you love and spend quality time with family and friends

• you eat what you want because you want it, not because you’re tired or stressed or feeling low. It’s about really enjoying foods free of guilt, knowing you can say no to food and understanding that you can eat and drink anything if consumed in the right amounts

• you feel able to cope with the stresses in your life, finding ways to switch off from them and have mechanisms in place that relax you and keep you healthy

• you have a good mix of exercise that you really enjoy and that fits into your daily life.

Most of all, you know when you’re well balanced when you have the right balance of behaviours that give you the outcomes you’re looking for and when those healthier behaviours begin to feel like a natural part of what you do, a normal and actually essential part of your routine and who you are as a person. When they’re not there you don’t like it and so getting back to them becomes easy.

I hope this was interesting and helps you to understand the philosophy I try to bring to everything that balance does.

Please do write in the comment box below to tell me what balance means to you and how you know when you’re feeling well balanced. Your thoughts and comments inspire me to improve what I do and come up with new and better ways to help in future.

Stay balanced,

Paul

Choice: The good and the bad

Eighteen years ago, a much younger me (with less grey hair, and much more of it) did a Fitness Instructor qualification and began working in a gym for the princely sum of £5 an hour. At the time, I was under the impression that my courses were about gaining knowledge - learning about diet and exercises and that I'd then be able to go out into the world, tell people what to do and they’d get fitter and healthier as a result…

How naive and wrong I was!

Adults are essentially taller children. If you tell them what to do, they rebel just as much as their five-year old son or daughter would. Over the years I read everything I could about behaviour change, psychology and neuroscience, trying to understand how the brain works and I how could apply this knowledge to help people change. I came to the conclusion that my job was to let people choose their changes for themselves, so I started balance to coach them through this. I was convinced that my job was never to tell people what to do, just to be there to support them in making choices for themselves…

How naive and wrong I was!

What I’ve essentially discovered is that choice is hugely important to people and that any programme where you are told what to do will eventually fall down, but that providing people with too much choice can be overwhelming and leave them feeling paralysed…it’s all about finding the right balance. Here we’ll take a look at why choice can be both good and bad, and how you can use this knowledge in your quest for balance.

The bad

The amount of information we process in our brains each day has increased to unbelievable amounts in recent years, more than five times what it was just 30 years ago. Estimates put it at the equivalent of 174 newspapers every 24 hours…that’s a lot of reading! Comparing to computers (which of course, your brain is an extremely high-tech model of), it’s though we each process around 34 gigabytes of data a day. As a kid, my dad would have salivated at the thought of owning a device so powerful…which funnily enough, he did, it was just between his ears.

Right, that’s quite enough extra data for your brain to process, what’s my point? Even the highest quality computers begin to work more slowly when they’re overloaded with data. Have you ever gone shopping and been unable to choose between the 78 different breakfast cereals on offer, the 146 different loaves of bread, 24 different suntan lotions and 16 types of apples? It gets worse if you shop on the internet. Many a time I’ve tried to buy a new pair of trainers, book a hotel or a holiday and spent an hour or more trawling through comparison sites, links to special offers, Amazon, Google searches, eBay, villa listings and the myriad of other sites where choice is endless. All i often end up with is a headache. Back in the day, there’d be a handful of trainer brands and I could choose between black ones or white ones. With holidays, I’d go to a travel agents where they’d do the searching for me and narrow it down to about three for me to choose from. All this meant that my brain hurt a bit less.

It’s clear that choice can be bad. In fact, it can be paralysing. When you try to multi-task, your brain repeatedly switches between each of the things you’re trying to do; back and forth, back and forth, and each time it uses energy to achieve this, making it very tired. In much the same way, having to switch from option to option, trawling through page after page of 3-star hotels in central London, hoping to save £20 or get the nicest looking room and breakfast included, fatigues your brain and makes choosing seem much harder.

If you’ve watched Kirsty and Phil on Location, Location, Location, you’ll know what I mean; they’re often introduced to couples who’ve seen 50 houses or more but, as of yet still haven’t been able to pick one to live in. And if you’ve sat in a restaurant where the menu is so vast you don’t even know where to begin, pawing over it for some time before eventually choosing the dish you always have because it requires less thinking, you’ll know what I mean. Choice can be tiring and lead to inaction. It’s no coincidence that people who are stressed often talk of being unable to make decisions; their computer is full and no longer has the processing power.

It’s no wonder then that diet plans and exercise programmes that restrict choice are hugely popular, they save us having to make yet more choices about what exercise to do or what to eat for breakfast, mid-morning, lunch and dinner every single day. The problem is that one of the fundamental traits of being human is our innate desire to control our own destiny. And when we feel like the ability to choose has been taken away, we rebel. We don’t stick to the calorie-controlled diet, we don’t continue to cut out caffeine, alcohol, sugar or whatever else it is we’re not supposed to be having, and we don’t do the exercises our personal trainer told us to. We choose to take back control…isn’t that what the whole Br**it thing is about?

The good

As I’ve just mentioned, we don’t like to be shackled. We’re independent creatures and our desire for free will means we like to make our own choices. Choice is empowering and it also helps recognise that we know ourselves best and can often decide what’s in our best interests. Choice allows us to do things that fit with our values and beliefs, it allows us learn and to change things when they’re not working

The fact that each of us has our own unique genetic blueprint and our own mind creating unique thoughts every second of the day means that choice is a must. Because humans are all unique, programmes designed for the masses can never exactly fit our needs. I could no sooner write an exercise programme now that would work for 50 different people as I could walk to the moon for a nose around.

The balanced approach

So what takeaways are there from this very deep, philosophical wandering of mine?

1) Choice can be both helpful and unhelpful, so choose your choices wisely.

If you waste all of your brain power deciding what brand of couscous to buy in the supermarket, you’ll have very little left for making decisions like which mortgage to get, who to marry (if anyone) and the other big stuff!

Daniel Levitin, in his book The Organised Mind, suggests limiting less important choices to a set number of options, say three. Browse the stationery sections of three websites for a new diary and pick one from the selection that best suits your needs. It might not be perfect, but unless you design your own, it probably never will be, but it’ll save much needed energy for other big decisions and it’ll prevent you walking away with nothing.

In the context of health and fitness, you might weigh up two or three choices of gyms, footwear, trainers or apps and go for the one that seems right. The great thing is, if it’s not right, you can always choose to change your mind.

2) Delegate choices to others who can help

Joining Weight Watchers or hiring a PT is doing exactly this; you are choosing to pass on some of your choices to someone you trust. They can then provide you with the diet or exercise routine to follow so that you don’t have to make all of the choices. You have 34GB of data floating around your head so there’s no room to pick between the rower and the cross trainer or the myriad dinner options in the supermarket.

The growth of the meals delivered to your door industry is evidence of this delegation of choice; either you get something that’s ready to go, or you get all the ingredients and a recipe card, no need to think, just follow the instructions. If you love your exercise classes, you’re choosing to be told what to do, maybe because it just removes the stress of choice.

The key comes in point 1; take time to choose the best person or service that will meet your needs, that’s the most valuable choice. And hey, if you chose the wrong one, don’t be afraid to choose another.

I myself am using this knowledge to guide the structure of my latest book, working title ‘Think: How to achieve changes and make them last.’ In the past, I’d have left it completely open to you how you worked through it and that may well have left you overwhelmed by choice. This time around there’s a set, step-by-step structure to follow, allowing you to be guided through the process of change without having to make too many choices. The option to rebel and read it in a different order will of course always be there.

Big Hairy Audacious Goals

This fella is definitely big and hairy. And it appears that maybe your goals should be too.

In their book about building habits that last, James Collins and Jerry Porras believe there’s a huge amount of benefit in setting powerful, bold, life-changing goals that take you outside of your comfort zone. It should be a clear, compelling goal that literally inspires you.

A famous example of one of their so-called BHAG’s (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) might be America’s desire to put the first person on the moon. Of course you don’t need to travel into outer space, but you do need something that’s equivalent to shooting for the stars.

Make sure your goals are HARD

You’ll be very familiar with the SMART acronym commonly used with goals, the A of which stands for Achievable. We’ve long been told to set goals that we know we can achieve, and whilst we need to believe we can do it, it appears there’s a lot to be said for being a dreamer.

Edwin Locke and Gary Latham conducted a review of years worth of research into goal-setting; indeed across the studies they looked at, 40,000 people had set goals of some kind. What they uncovered was that difficult goals consistently led to higher levels of performance in a wide range of settings, indeed they note that…

“the highest or most difficult goals produced the highest levels of effort and performance.”

It’s thought that setting tougher goals helps us to focus our mind on the task at hand, filtering out other things that may distract from the main target. They also act to energise us, increasing our drive to succeed, and they help us to develop persistence as they can’t be achieved overnight. Finally, they appear to make us use our brains more, increasing ingenuity.

You’ll know you’ve set yourself a HARD goal if it is:

• Heartfelt: Do you have extremely important reasons for wanting to achieve your goal?

• Animated: Can you picture yourself clearly having achieved the goal? What’s it like? What does it look, feel and sound like to you?

• Required: Have you worked out clearly the tasks you need to do in order to achieve your goal? more on these shortly/

• Difficult: Have you identified the knowledge and skills you need in order to make your goal a reality.

Focus on the process

Because BHAG’s can take time, focusing solely on the outcome can be demotivating as even if you’re making progress, it can still seem like a long way away.

This is where you need to mix your gigantic goal with more frequent stepping stones. Process goals are ones where you set yourself targets around what you’re going to do as opposed to what you want as a result. So for example, when NASA wanted to put Neil Armstrong on the moon, they had to set themselves hundreds if not thousands of smaller goals around things like rocket design, fuel to be used, coping with G-Force, designing a moon-landing craft and of course getting the astronauts home safely.

Process goals should be at the forefront of your mind at all times, giving you daily tasks to achieve to inch your way towards the dream. Make a list of all the things you need to do and then identify the very first one you need to do. Once done you move on to the next and so on. Think of it as project management; you’re moving one step at a time towards completing your mission.

If you didn’t get chance to read my blog earlier this week on quick wins, make sure you take a look at it here as there’s more on process goals to help you.

So, dream big and you might be surprised what you can do.

Why is your brain so addicted to quick wins?

You may have seen my post on Facebook yesterday about that moment when you achieve something that wasn’t even on your to-do list, add it to your list and then tick it off straight away! It seems ridiculous doesn’t it, but there are powerful factors at play here that lead you to behave this way, and these things also heavily influence your approach to your health, fitness and wellbeing. Before we go on, here’s a link to the Daily Planner I took a picture of yesterday to use alongside my post, as there seemed to be a lot of love for it!

Ok, hands up, who clicked on the link straight away? Keep your hand up if you bought it. Why did you do that? Instant gratification. It’s highly powerful, addictive actually and it influences the fitness regimes you choose and your love for online shopping. Plus it was half-price so your brain loved it even more!!!!! Here’s what happens…

Your brain is hard-wired to look for quick wins and it loves stuff that’s shiny and new too. If you can get something done quickly, like buying an organiser with 1-click so that you feel like you’ll be more on top of your busy life, or you can lose four pounds in a day just by using the latest weight loss programme, a part of your brain known as the nucleus acumbens in your limbic system lights up. It’s the same part of the brain that lights up when you reach the next level on that addictive game, the same part that lights up when you tear open that chocolate bar and wolf it down in one go, the same part that lights up when a gambler wins a bet, the same part that lights up when a drug addict takes cocaine, and the same part that lights up during orgasm.

In any of these situations, you release a neurotransmitter called dopamine; often referred to as the ‘happy hormone’. Put simply, it makes you feel good, and boy do we like to feel good. Daniel Levitin, in his wonderful book The Organized Mind, notes the addictive nature of this response. He talks about gamers in China and South Korea who were so compelled to keep playing and receive their next dopamine hit, that they died having gamed non-stop for up to three days. He refers to this desire for a quick hit as hyper-immediacy and notes that it is an ever-increasing phenomenon in our technology-driven modern society.

Take your phone for example - the perfect place for quick wins. It lights up, beeps or plays a cheerful little jingle when you receive a text, email or any one of a raft of announcements. You often feel compelled to reply instantly to messages and you’re rewarded with a different sound when you do, the swooshing of that text zapping across cyberspace in an instant. And how do you feel? You feel like you’ve achieved something and so as a reward, your brain provides a nice little shot of dopamine. You get an even bigger rush when your clear your email inbox, you feel like you want to parade around the office holding your laptop aloft and throw an impromptu party.

This why tech can be so addictive. How many times do you check your phone to see if someone has liked or responded to your social media post? It’s the desire to send off that little rush of chemicals and make you feel good. And this desire for quick wins now pervades all aspects of society.

Take the email or text thing; do you get frustrated when someone doesn’t reply immediately? That wouldn’t happen in days gone by as the expectation that it was possible simply wasn’t there. Nobody posted a letter and expected a handwritten reply the very next day, nobody ran out to intercept the postman early in their rounds, wrestled them to the floor and tore open every envelop addressed to them in the desire for the response. They waited patiently; it probably took them a while to write it and get it sent off and so the same speed was often applied to reading the reply once it arrived.

Not today…compose message…send…stare at screen (hoping to see the little dots come up at the bottom to tell you the other person is reading it NOW…get frustrated if those dots disappear and the person hasn’t replied immediately). They may be trying to escape a burning building at the time, wrestle a bear escaped from the local zoo, be in the middle of a work meeting or making dinner for three kids, but that doesn’t matter to your limbic system, it wants that dopamine hit now!

What’s this got to do with your health and fitness?

Health and fitness goals are no different; you’re not daft, you know that what you want will probably take some time, but that’s not exciting for your brain as it doesn’t offer the instant gratification it has come to crave and expect.

So it’s no wonder we continuously fall for ‘9-day detoxes’, ‘lose 2-stone in a week bootcamps’ and ‘6-pack abs in 6 weeks’ articles in magazines. Those things light up your brain in the same way that your over-zealous neighbour lights up the entire street with a Christmas display to rival Blackpool illuminations.

You’re not daft, you’re not really fooled into thinking this is the solution I’ve been craving, but you can’t resist the gratification you’ll get from quick results. And for the PT industry, sometimes we struggle to understand why people continuously choose the path of least resistance. But why wouldn’t you choose quick and easy over the long road? It’s far more pleasurable after all and so when the quick fix falls by the wayside, you think, ‘I won’t do that again’ but then that 21-day detox comes along and your nucleus acumbens just can’t say no.

Don’t think that us PT’s don’t do it too; over the last few years there has been an explosion of fitness business gurus and online courses offering ‘6 easy steps to £100k a year’ or ‘earn what you want in just 8 hours a week’. And guess what, PT’s get lured in as their brain reacts like Charlie when staring through the window of the chocolate shop, tongue out, anticipating the instant pleasure from that Wonka Bar and the chance to get his hands on a golden ticket.

Becoming a ‘Haretoise’

Is there a more balanced approach, one that blends the addictive power of quick wins with something healthy that yields lasting results? I think there is, and here’s what I’d suggest.

Do you remember Aesop’s fable, The Tortoise and the Hare? Well then you know that the tortoise is content to take things slow and steady, aware she’ll get there in the end (in the spirit of modern times, I’ve made the tortoise female as she’s the sensible one who’s good at long-term planning). In the same way, you can use your inner tortoise to good effect. Identify the desire, the long-term or big goal - whatever it might be…losing a stone, dropping two trouser sizes, running a half marathon or lifting 100kg for the first time.

The problem with this of course, is that it’s going to take some time, and your nucleus acumbens isn’t going to stand for that, it wants satisfying much more urgently.

So you break the big desire down into smaller chunks. Why do you think Weight Watcher’s and Slimming world have been so successful? Because there’s a weekly weigh-in, a chance for gratification for your efforts every single week.

But even that’s too log these days, so you need to invoke your inner hare and ensure he’s getting quick wins every single day (yep the hare is a man, short-term thinking for instant gratification required). How can you do that? Here’s where you can use your behaviours to good effect. Most fitness and weight loss regimes focus solely on the outcomes; your brain lights up when it sees the scales tell you you’re lighter or you see your ab’s poking through when just a few weeks before it was more like Play-Doh. You can get the same sense of achievement by setting and achieving daily targets around behaviours, as long as you bring a few tricks into play:

Let’s use cutting down alcohol as an example. You set yourself the challenge of booze-free weekdays and you use the following tools to get that dopamine release you need to stay motivated and keep going towards your long-term desire (the boring health and weight-loss one that the tortoise is slowly plodding towards).

1) Record it visually - it might just be a piece of paper stuck to your fridge or desk that you can tick each day. You get a pleasure hit from the act of ticking it and even more when your family or colleagues see it too and give you praise or the odd high-five

2) Go high-tech - You might prefer to use an app, like the DrinkAware one, that allows you to set goals, track what you’re doing and gives you awards for achieving them. If you’ve ever used a Fitbit, you’ll know how addictive it can be to hit your steps and get the fireworks display on screen or receive a new badge for total distance covered or floors climbed. That’s because the same fireworks are happening inside your brain at that moment

3) Share goals and updates with a family member, friend or colleague - why do you think people post their latest run on social media or Strava became so popular? People like getting recognition; it keeps the hare happy with quick pleasure hits.

4) Check on the progress of your tortoise - much like Weight Watchers (sorry, WW as of recently), the progress check provides you with another source of feedback that can set off your happy chemicals and keep you on the path to success.

If you can strike the balance with the quick wins for the hare, whilst allowing the tortoise to move along gradually towards her big desire, you have a recipe that satisfies your brain and allows you to achieve lasting change.

Lessons from a long run

As many of you know, last weekend was my marathon in Frankfurt and I was excited to be feeling fit and going for a PB. You might also know that it didn’t really go to plan, and I wondered if there were some lessons I could share that might be useful for you in your own quest for better health and fitness.

This isn’t a blog about running marathons necessarily, or even a blog about running. I thought I’d focus more on trying to perform at your very best, the important things to consider and what happens if it doesn’t quite work out this time around.

When you’re trying to achieve something, be that a race time, a new strength PB, a weight loss goal or even personal and life goals like running a business or learning a new skill, it’s unlikely that you’ll have success every time.

Often, we have lots of success in the early stages as we start out from a low level of skill or knowledge. With my marathons for example, last Sunday was my 6th and up until now, I’ve run a PB every time I’ve done one. Sometimes only by a matter of seconds or minutes, but the improvement has been gradual. As you reach the peak of your abilities though, it becomes less likely that you can simply get better every time you do something. You’re bound to have failures along the way.

At this point, you essentially have two options as far as I can tell:

1) Give up trying to get better

2) Review what went well (repeat this in future) and what didn’t go so well (change it next time).

If I think about the run last weekend, there were loads of good things about it; I had zero issues with uncomfortable chaffing which I’ve never achieved before, so I know my clothing, footwear and voluminous application of vaseline were right for me. I never felt hungry or thirsty which has always been a problem for me, so the plan regarding food and drink was good.

Even when I started to break physically, my mental state remained relaxed. I never became frustrated, I just kept my focus on one mile at a time (something I’ve never mastered as well before), blocking out the fact that there were more to come afterwards. This allowed me to re-evaluate every mile and meant that once I had broken, I was able to just relax, hobble on home and enjoy the music and the ridiculousness of marathons. I’d love to say I could enjoy the scenery, but apart from being flat and good for quick times, Frankfurt marathon is actually a bit dull in terms of spectacles. The skyscraper skyline is the main attraction, but the truth is that in marathons it’s often busy around you and looking up is not really an option, you have to do quite a lot of staring at the floor to ensure you don’t trip yourself or anyone else over.

My training went pretty much to plan, managing more than I’d done before and at faster speeds. Vicky’s expert planning also meant we were only a few hundred metres from the start so I could warm-up in the hotel gym beforehand and crawl back quickly afterwards (more Vicky’s wonderful organisation than mine but I credit myself for marrying her)!

So all in all, there were a lot of positives to take and that’s why I’m not disappointed. When something you’re trying to do goes wrong, list the positives from the experience. If you can frame it as learning rather than failure, it starts to feel useful.

Ultimately, I didn’t run the time I wanted and so, whilst it’s important for me to take the good stuff from the day, I also need to evaluate what stopped me getting what I wanted and do something about it for next time.

What was it? My issue lay in my biomechanics. By 12 miles, I was feeling tight in my left hip and lower back, by 14 miles this had stopped me being able to bend my left knee properly and not long after that, this led to my right hip and knee hurting a lot as they did more of the work. I believe the problem stems from the major injury I sustained when I was 18, tearing my right quadriceps off my leg completely. The muscle re-attached itself, half way up my leg and by the time I’d discovered exactly what had happened, I was told that surgery could likely cause more problems and I should learn to live with it.

I’ve spent the last 19 years feeling discomfort in my neck, back, hip and leg on the opposite side, essentially because the muscles of the left leg are longer and more of my weight shifts to that side. I never actually have a problem with the muscle I tore. Over the years, I’ve managed it pretty well and achieved some cool things fitness-wise, but running marathons has always seemed a bit too much for it to take; it’s always joint discomfort on this side that slows me down as opposed to fitness or fatigue. I think this time I was too optimistic that it would be ok; often I can manage it pretty well but a few weeks before the race my back locked up and I should have seen a masseuse or osteopath to release it. Better late than never though; I’ve spoken to an osteopath friend and I’ll see him ASAP, and I’m considering seeing a specialist to see if I can re-balance my stride through having some orthotics made.

The point here is that if you’re trying to achieve something and it goes wrong, you need to look for solutions. In performance terms, we’re only as strong as our weakest link, which in my case is my wonky leg. To be as fast as I want to be, I need to be less wonky! For health and weight loss, it’s about looking at the thing or things that are holding you back. It might be that you’ve improved consistently, but now you’ve stopped. What’s the next step that can take you to the next level?

Here’s where we have our choice; I could feel dejected, stop doing all the good things I’ve been working on and know for sure that I’ll never achieve my marathon goal, or I can persist, try to sort my mechanical issues and see if that’s the difference that makes the difference. The only thing that we can ever guarantee is that we give up, we won’t achieve what we set out to do; if we try again, keep the good bits, learn from the not so good and change things, maybe, just maybe, we might.

I will caveat this from a performance perspective by saying that you also need to listen to your body. There will come a time when the risk of pushing yourself to the max for a given event, carries more risks than benefits. I personally don’t think I’m there yet, but we’ll see how it goes once I’ve worked on my biomechanics.

You’ll also often spend the weeks following a race that didn’t go to plan considering doing another one straight away! I'll be honest, I’ve already looked at the marathon calendar to see if there’s something in November or December to try. From experience though, this is often a bad idea, especially after longer races. Your body is tired and a bit broken and it needs time to heal, especially if it was some sort of injury that stopped you reaching you goal. Let it go, regroup, rebuild, recover and then try again.

Remember…

1) Even when it hasn’t gone to plan, highlight the positives - what’s good that you should keep doing?

2) Change from a mindset of failure to one on learning - what can you alter for next time?

3) Persistence pays off - the only true way to achieve what you want is to keep going.

You have the power

1) Your health, fitness and wellbeing is mostly influenced by your most frequent health behaviours; the things that you do day-in, day-out that affect you for better or worse. You can get a bit fitter and healthier in 7 days, even more so in 21 days and achieve even more in three months, but you also have to keep doing these things to stay that way, and that never changes. It is a lifelong quest, the ‘game’ of life if you like, and you have to learn to play in a way that works for you, one that’s sustainable and allows you to do more of the better things, more often, so that you feel good the majority of the time.

2) You have the absolute power to control these behaviours, and therefore to control your health, fitness and wellbeing. For some of you, there are absolutely things that impact your health and nothing you can do about them. The key is in accepting that some things are beyond your control and focusing on improving and expanding the bits that are. You’ve got to work with what you’ve got.

3) There is no failure, only feedback. Change is not the same for everyone. Sometimes making a change is quick and easy, at others it’s long and complicated. We will not always succeed in our attempts first time, second, or even third. We will however succeed eventually if we keep going. We definitely won’t if we give up. Even staying the same requires persistence; you might have a ‘bad’ week because of a holiday or a celebration, but that’s cool, it’s just about learning from it and as mentioned above, accepting it and moving on.

These are the three tenets of the new balance book and online challenges/games that I’m working on. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to share some of my thoughts around these with you in more depth; coping and behaviour change strategies that I use with clients to help them discover a mindset that makes the changes they want more likely.

Let’s start at a really important place; your ability to control your health, fitness and wellbeing. There’s this thing called Locus of Control; nope not locusts, they’re giant insects! It’s all about whether we feel we have control of something, giving us an ‘internal locus of control’ or if we feel it’s beyond us to manage right now, meaning it has an ‘external locus.

I’ve not lost the skills I developed in A-Level art! Luckily, with practice, I know I can get better so it’s in my control. ;-)

So, for example, health behaviours that have an internal locus of control for you might be:

• I can choose to swap an alcoholic drink in the evenings for a non-alcoholic choice; I know I can as I’ve done it before and it was easy

• I know I can walk or cycle into work as I have all the kit and there are showers and secure bike storage there

• I have an hour spare in the evenings where I could do a workout at home or go for a run.

Whereas things in your external locus of control right now might be:

• I have an ongoing medical condition; it’s genetic and some days it can leave me feeling too tired to do anything

• I have to get the kids to school in the mornings and then get to work so I know there’s no time for me to exercise there

• I don’t buy the food shopping so I can’t control what we have in the cupboards

The aim over time should be to increase the size of our internal locus of control, whilst reducing the external locus. If it helps to remember it, imagine you’re on ‘I’m a Celebrity’, slowly eating one Locust at a time so that you have more and more inside you. And if it doesn’t help, stop that thought right now.

This chap has increased the size of his internal locus of control, shrinking his external locus. No bugs were harmed during the process.

A little question to ask yourself

Get a pen and a piece of paper. Make two columns:

1) Internal Locus - Things that affect my health/fitness/wellbeing (or whatever your specific goal is) that are WITHIN my control.

2) External Locus - Things that affect my health/fitness/wellbeing (or whatever your specific goal is) that I CANNOT control right now.

Study the list…

Is there anything that you said was within your control that you’re not doing to the best of your abilities right now? Could you go back to not drinking in the week or using that free hour to get on your exercise bike whilst you watch TV? If there’s a couple, just pick one to work on for now, the others can come later.

If you’re already nailing your Internal Locus bits, ask yourself,

‘could I do anything to gain more control over something on my External Locus list?’

It can be a very small thing; you may do some of the food shopping yourself, or even just sit with your partner and make the list together so you have more influence on what they bring home. If it seems hard to find something, think about the things you’re already controlling and see if any of the things you do there or the skills you possess that enable you to achieve these could be transferred across.

Control is confidence

You’ve chosen something. How does that feel already? It’s unlikely you’ve done it yet as you only chose it a few seconds ago, but still, you’ll often find it brings a sense of relaxation, a confidence that you can achieve things. This positive mindset also brings with it a sense of resilience, a change in thought-process, which means that even if you try and it doesn’t work first time, it’s not the end of the world, you’ll keep tweaking it and trying again until you get there. We’ll look more at the mindset of persistence very soon; it can be learned and it will help you achieve awesome stuff!

You can repeat this process at regular intervals; weekly is good, each time seeing if you can take charge of one more behaviour, increasing the size of your internal locus of control and bringing you step-by-step closer to better balance.

Stay balanced and enjoy the journey,

Paul

The important stuff - how your values impact your health and wellbeing

In the last few weeks I’ve been working very hard on the upcoming balance book. There’s been a lot of planning, writing, editing, re-writing, researching and tea drinking. The structure is now complete start to finish and I’m busy filling in the bits of content.

I thought I’d share some of these bits with you as I go along, to give you a flavour of what the book is like and to offer you some useful help with your health, fitness and wellbeing. This first piece comes from the very start of the book as it has the potential to impact everything you do from setting goals to making changes. It’s all about your values; I hope you find it helpful.

Values - what’s important to you in life?

“Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.” 

Brian Tracy

What is important to you in your life? What do you believe in? What guiding principles do you wish to live by? These might seem like strange questions to ask here, but they’re hugely important to the lifestyle changes that you are considering making. Why you might ask? Let’s take a look.

A former client of mine, Emily, wanted to lose a stone. We’d agree targets and actions but when we came to review her progress, she’d never achieve them, saying she just felt that she wasn’t the sort of person who could lose weight. This went on for a while, until in one of our sessions, she mentioned that she had a young daughter who’d suffered with an eating disorder, although she was now much better. 

We discussed how the impact this had on her and she realised that she was worried that her losing weight might set her daughter off on the wrong path again. To Emily, her daughter was the most important thing in the world and she constantly worried about her. She realised that she was so concerned for her daughter that, whenever she was around, she would eat in order to try to encourage her to do the same. 

We talked about how eating too much and being overweight could also be unhealthy, and she said that she would talk to her daughter about her weight-loss goals. As it turned out, her daughter wasn’t worried about it in the slightest and actively encouraged her mom to get fitter and healthier, which she duly achieved over the next few months. Emily’s strong family values had at first hindered her progress because she hadn’t found a way to reconcile them with her other health goals. Once she had, she was in the right place to achieve them.

What I saw with Emily was the she placed the thing most important to her at the top of her list. Her daughter was more important to her than her own health. And it’s the same for everyone; we all have things in our world that are vitally important to us. For some people, it’s family, for others it may be friendships, success, health, wealth, trust, adventure, compassion, or learning. The difficulty comes when we want to do something to improve our health, fitness or wellbeing, but we feel in our heads that this may in some way negatively impact on our values. 

Not everyone places health high up their values list, nor should they. Your values are unique to you; they began forming at a very early age through life experiences and the influence of those close to you and changing them is hard. The great news is, you don’t have to change them, all you need to do if you want to get fitter and healthier is find a way to balance the changes you feel you should make with your values. For example, if relaxation is an important value for you and you currently smoke to help you relax when things are stressful at work, giving up smoking may not work unless you find an alternative way to unwind. Equally if career success to ensure you can look after those dear to you is your most important value, it can be hard to find time to fit exercise and healthy eating into your daily routine. Recognising that being fitter and healthier can help you achieve career success through increased energy, concentration and motivation is an important step, as is making changes that still allow you to work as hard as you feel is needed. 

Interestingly, I know that my own values often cause challenges for me in a different way. I place being fit and healthy at the very top of the tree as I feel it helps me with everything else, but sometimes I’ll prioritise doing a workout over my tax return or getting more sleep over meeting a deadline. The key is to find the right balance.

What are your values?

Step 1: Check out the task in the link below, created by William Miller and colleagues. Miller, along with another colleague called Stephen Rollnick, created a form of coaching known as Motivational Interviewing which has been hugely successful in helping people to change, with a recent review of the scientific studies done on the topic stating that it ‘outperforms traditional advice giving in the treatment of a broad range of behavioural problems.

You can add any values that you feel are missing, or even skip the task and simply make a list of the things you feel are extremely important to you in your life.

Whichever way you do it, you should finish by selecting the FIVE most important values to you overall.

https://www.guilford.com/add/miller2/values.pdf

Step 2: Look at your five most important values. Might they in any way negatively impact your health, fitness and wellbeing?

Step 3: Do they positively impact your health, fitness and wellbeing at all?

Step 4: How might being fitter and healthier help you to live more in line with your values?

You should now have a good idea of what’s important to you and understand how these things might be both problematic and beneficial for your health, fitness and wellbeing. Being able to link any lifestyle changes back to your personal values can be a fantastic tool to motivate you to stick at them and maybe even make more changes in future.

Think like a professional sportsperson to get fitter, healthier and happier

This weekend sees the World Cup final, sadly without England, the finals of Wimbledon and the continuation of the Tour de France. You'll see men and women at the very pinnacle of their sports, performing at the highest level. It's not just physical ability that sets them apart; they're also mentally strong and have developed a range of psychological tools to help them stay focused, positive and calm when the pressure is on.

You might not want to be amongst the best athletes on the planet but you can still learn from them and use their techniques to help you achieve your health, fitness and wellbeing goals. So what exactly do they do that makes such a difference?

Chase your dreams

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested that people who set themselves tougher goals were more likely to achieve them. The reason proposed is that tougher goals enable you to maintain higher motivation levels for longer. Don't just accept average, go after the dream.

Focus on the process

Whilst you might do better having a bigger goal to work towards, you then also need to be capable of focusing on the things you need to do to get there. Whilst Serena may say to herself that she wants to win Wimbledon, her first goal will be to get her first serve in. Mark Cavendish will set himself the target of being in bed early enough to ensure he gets enough rest ahead of tomorrow's stage, and we all know how Gareth Southgate got the England players thinking about their roles for every single set piece in the game. It's the repeated achievement of these smaller goals that makes the big one possible. For you it might be to have a healthy breakfast every day before leaving for work or making sure you've made your food and snacks for the next day the night before. It might be having your gym kit packed and having your lights out by 10:30 so you can be in the gym for 6:30. 

                "I was expecting a few more baby steps, but every time I go out there, I want to take a giant step forward, keep improving." 

                                 Serena Williams, on wanting to make small improvements after coming back from giving birth, but surprising herself by reaching the Wimbledon Final.              

Chunk it down

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. If you think about the epic goal you're working towards, it can feel overwhelming. How many times do you hear sportspeople say 'we'll take it one game at a time.' It sounds a bit boring when they keep repeating it, but it's true and it's this fantastic ability to make it seem smaller that helps them through it. Marathon runners don't think about the whole 26.2 miles, they just focus on getting over the crest of the hill. You can focus on just eating healthily today; worry about tomorrow when it comes. 

Show bouncebackability

Tennis players can be 0-40 down on their serve and fight back to win the game. Only the other day, Kevin Anderson came from two sets down against the mighty Roger Federer to win in five sets, taking the last one 13-11. He was only capable of this because he could forget what had gone and focus on the next point, and the next, then the next. 

You can do the same if you choose something less healthy for lunch or if you miss a gym class. Does it matter? Not if you pick yourself up and get back to it. It matters if you let it matter and get yourself on that negative hamster wheel - 'I ate something bad, I feel rubbish, so I can't be bothered to go for my run tonight - and that makes me feel down so I'll have a few drinks.' Athletes don't let the wheel start to turn; they recognise that something hasn't gone well, forgive themselves, forget about it and go again. You can too.

Use the power of words and pictures

Top athletes are very good at using their mind to good effect. They can visualise the successful outcome they're after. Jess Ennis-Hill used to picture herself performing the precise technique she was looking for and Jonny Wilkinson famously used to repeat the same routine before every kick, picturing in his head the feeling of the ball as it struck his foot and watching it fly straight between the posts. You can practice seeing yourself lifting the weight you've been targeting, getting into the clothes you want to feel comfortable in again, or crossing the finish line in that race. When you do, really take yourself there; imagine what it looks like, the sounds you'd hear and the smells, tastes and feelings you'd experience.

They're also great at positive self-talk. Many clients have told me over the years how they struggle to manage the voice in their head, the one that tells them to eat the packet of biscuits in the cupboard or have some more of that cake in the office kitchen to celebrate Jennie's birthday. And why not? You won't achieve your goal anyway so it doesn't matter. Instead, use mantra's like the pro's. Gwen Jorgensen, two-time World Triathlon champion and Olympic gold medallist, says to herself 'These are not sacrifices, but investments. I truly believe they will pay me back ten-fold.' This could just as easily relate to dietary changes for a weight loss goal as it does to the hopes of a gold medal.

Distract yourself

What about when you're exercising? What do athletes do to get through the hard training? Many people assume that they enjoy it because they're so fit but that just isn't the case. They get so fit because they can endure the pain and tiredness required to reach that level. And that means they need ways to distract themselves when the going gets tough. Here are a few things you can try to get you through those tough workouts:

1) Think about the process - if you've gone for a run and you're struggling, focus on the actions of moving your arms and legs, the soft landing of your foot, relaxing your shoulders, standing tall. If you're lifting a weight, talk yourself through the key technique requirements as you do it

2) Breath - hopefully that's a given, but sometimes focusing on your breathing, especially when doing cardio, can make a real difference. Try to make your breaths slower than your movements. In turn it will slow your heart rate and make it feel easier

3) Count - you might use your watch on a run to do some calculations in your head. 'If it's taken me this long to get here, it'll take another 7 minutes til I reach the corner'. Alternatively, you can break things down into numbers - 'I'll just do another 15 minutes on the bike', or simply count your steps or pedal turns - 'I'll just do another 20' and so on.

4) Drift off - especially helpful in repetitive exercise that doesn't need to much concentration, make your shopping list, plan your holiday or one of mine and Vicky's favourites, think about what you'll have for dinner.

Any one of these techniques done regularly can help take you a step closer to your goals. Give one a try, and if it doesn't work for you, don't give up, simply try something else until it does.

Hope springs eternal

As I ran in the rain this morning (yes the world has definitely returned to normal), I thought about the what-ifs of England's performance last night. What if Kane had taken his chance in the first half or Lingard had put his foot through the ball instead of trying to side foot it into the bottom corner? What if we'd managed to stop them delivering the ball from wide areas, or if the ref had decided that the equaliser was actually a foul for a dangerously high foot?

What I realised was that none of it really mattered. In fact, it wasn't even football that mattered. What counted was that the nation of England had come together with one thing driving them; hope.

Before the game yesterday, Goran Ivanisevic the giant Croatian tennis player had berated the English for their arrogance in thinking that we were already in the final, we'd already won it. Roy Keane did the same after the game in an entertaining spat with Ian Wright. Luka Modric accused England of not showing Croatia enough respect, but all of them missed the point, except Wrighty who captured the mindset of the English nation perfectly.

We didn't think we'd won it, we never even thought we'd make the final, we just hoped. And about three weeks ago, if you'd asked most people, they'd have said we had no hope. Listen to the lyrics of the rejuvenated Baddiel and Skinner song, most of them are about our disappointments, the moments when we lost hope. 'It's coming home' doesn't represent an arrogant notion that the Jules Rimet trophy will again be paraded through the streets of England on an open top bus, it just reflects our hope that one day, it might.

The performances, actions and behaviours of the England team and management reignited hope in the last few weeks. A hope we haven't seen in football for over twenty years. We've had it in the tennis, with Murray finally bringing a British victory at Wimbledon and the 2012 Olympics ignited it for athletics and sports rarely watched at other times. And look what happened there; Murray did it again a few years later and Team GB went on to better their 2012 medal tally in Rio 4 years later.

Of course, hope for the sporting performances of our superstars is one thing, but it's not in our control. We can only support them, cheer them on from the sidelines. But it's well established that sporting successes bring a feel-good factor to a nation, a stronger bond and a sense of identity that may sometimes be hard to feel, especially in a world of Brexit, Trump, terror and fear.

Science tells us that hope is a good thing. Positive language has been shown to be contagious; it literally infects the mind of others. Obama's famous slogan 'Yes we can' probably wouldn't have gained as much traction if he'd opted for 'Erm...well maybe we could' and Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream...but it's not very likely' speech wouldn't have gone down in the history books.

There's also work to suggest that optimism, which is closely linked to hope, can positively affect wellbeing. But optimism is different to hope. We were optimistic about England's chances for the first time in years, and whilst this positive feeling will have been acknowledged by the players, it couldn't directly affect the outcome. Yes it could have made them feel better, inspired them and therefore boosted performance that way, but there was no direct link. 

But hope about your own situations is different. If you're hopeful of achieving better health and fitness, science suggests you'll be more determined to get there and less likely to give up should the path to success not run smooth. And that's the key to health, fitness and happiness; the repetition of behaviours frequently over long periods of time. A few weeks of exercise followed by months of nothing, or 9 days of dieting after which you revert to unhealthy habits will not lead to balance. If you give up, you'll never reach your goals, if you keep going, you might just get there.

Hope appears consistently in human history, from the works of ancient Greece to Shakespeare, the romantic poets, Dickens and Tolkien, from politicians and influencers like Lincoln, Churchill, Luther King, Mandela and Lennon, it's ever-present. It's one of the key tenets of the Star Wars films and maybe its popularity endures because, at the end of the day, no matter what happens, there's always hope.

This is summed up brilliantly by two very different characters. Martin Luther King said "we must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope", whilst last night in his on-air tiff with Roy Keane, Ian Wright repeatedly asked him 'why shouldn't we get excited about being in a semi-final?'

Be like Ian Wright, be hopeful, good things might just happen.

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