Month: June 2022

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How Do You Want To Talk About Being Large?

As a Personal Trainer, I discuss weight differently than I do as a Health Coach. In this installment, I want to discuss how these professions and our society are evolving regarding weight, obesity, and body-shaming. Are you wondering why I decided to talk about this subject? I have three reasons. I read about Queen Latifah’s reaction when her trainer called her obese; I completed Tasha Edwards, MS course on Breaking Body Barriers. Finally, I read Kellie Walters, Ph.D. recent article in IDEA Fitness Journal, Weight Biases: How Do They Influence Our Industry.

I want to know how do you want to talk about your body size? I invite everyone to share their comments below as we explore this topic. The material provoked a lot of reflection about how I think and talk about weight.  

Health Coaching and Personal Training Approaches.

First the approaches of both of these professions are starting to converge. Remember that I recently was certified as a Health Coach and have had my Personal Training certifications for over ten years. The Health Coach perspective asks coaches to address their weight bias first. We are taught to see our clients as a whole and resourceful people who can change their lives. As a coach, we collaborate with our clients to help them find their best selves. We are immediately instructed to ask permission to discuss a client’s weight. We candidly discuss what words will be used during that discussion. What resonated strongly with me was when I watched Tasha Edwards’ say that 95.8% of women 40-50 years old have negative emotions about their weight. I have always been stocky. I did not take action to improve my health earlier because I thought it was of no use.  

My Personal Training instruction and experience were quite different. While we were taught about the many causes of obesity (environmental including medications, stress, genetics, hormonal, sleep, energy balance), we were encouraged to use strong labels like obesity or overweight. As a new trainer, senior trainers often told me people need to have a wake-up call to become motivated. That their life depended on this change. No wonder 50% of women avoid gyms and fitness classes. However, the practice is changing with people like Tasha Edwards and Kellie Walters speaking out.

Walters gives fitness professionals five steps to reducing weight bias.

  1. Start with yourself. 
  2. Solicit feedback.
  3. Expand your worldview.
  4. Think through your actions.
  5. Continue Your Education.  

Using these five steps I started to think of my biases. First, there was a thread in each of these items. That anti-fat bias was a colonial idea used by white men to justify enslavement. At first, I shied away from this idea. Then as I reflected, I realized it has merit. As a trainer, I seldom saw large Black women in the gym. I did always assume thick people wanted to lose weight. I have to admit I have a bias here, and Tasha and Kellie helped me realize it. I will use the fourth step to ensure that I think through how I use images and how to be more inclusive of people with different body sizes.  

Stating Measurement Results in Language Our Clients Find Offensive.

Queen Latifa recently related a story about a discussion with her trainer. The trainer spoke to her about her BMI and called her obese based on the result. In Adreon Patterson’s Cinemablend article, the trainer, Jeanette Jenkins, states she based her comments on two other tests: bio-electrical impedance and calipers. As I read the two descriptions of events, I thought, what if the trainer had the discussion about how the client wanted to talk about her weight. I wonder if then the anger could have been avoided. This would have enabled a deeper discussion of the client’s values and motivation for training. Would it have been better to skip the characterization and focus on the higher rates of high blood pressure, heart attack, and diabetes for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).

Assessments help estimate the risk to your health. However, only you can tell your health coach or trainer what words do not cause you shame. Sharing words like large or thick that are not shaming to you will help your coach engage you in further discussion about your health concerns. What is important is that you understand the more significant health risk of a higher body fat percentage. The tests your doctor does on a routine physical like Cholesterol, Triglyceride levels, and blood pressure are all necessary measures.  

For more information about why health coaching is about you, please ready my blog post, It’s All About You.

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Disclaimer. The information provided in this article may not be appropriate for all people. Suppose you are not currently exercising or have or suspect you have conditions like a cardiovascular, metabolic, or renal disease. In that case, you should consult your physician before considering any suggested changes.  

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Better Sleep Homework

Donna Wurster

Better Sleep Homework.  Are you ready to start?  If not that is OK, yoWhat is sleep hygiene?u can read on to explore some of the alternatives.  Maybe you will decide to try out a few changes or take more time to think about it.  

I will start by providing some information about sleep hygiene.  If you want to skip  forward to the homework, then please do.

What is sleep hygiene?

Sleep hygiene includes activities a person does to ensure high-quality sleep.  I don’t have to repeat that in these trying days and with all our obligations to work, family, and community that none of us gets enough sleep.  Should you decide to make some changes, remember that you will need to give yourself 2-3 months for these changes to become a habit. Consider reading an earlier blog post to learn more about Making Small Changes .

Good sleep hygiene has many components designed to enhance your body’s natural cycle of sleep.  For a deeper explanation of the sleep cycle read my previous post.  The room where you sleep is a good starting point.  I understand many people use their bedrooms for an office, living room, and place to eat.  When multi-use cannot be avoided try creating a sitting area so that your bed is reserved for sleeping.  The temperatureture in the room is normally suggested at 60-68 degrees Fahrenheit.  Make it as cool as you can tolerate.  For most of us, a dark room is better.  Avoiding bright lights later in the day will help you fall to sleep.

During your day.

Plan to stay with a consistent sleep schedule.  As much as you can plan to get up at the same time each day and go to bed at the same time.  I can share that when I go to bed at the same time every night I am almost assured to stick with my exercise and eating plan.  Otherwise, the fatigue just makes me not want to start.  For many of you looking forward to the weekends for that extra sleep, consider giving it a try, maybe you will find you enjoy having the extra time to enjoy the morning.  

Seek out exposure to natural light early in the day.  There is nothing like getting out of bed and opening your blinds to see the sun.  You may be fortunate enough to be able to step outside for a few minutes to enjoy a bit of sunshine.  Some of us live in areas of the country that do not get much light so you may want to invest in bright light and use your wonderful imagination to picture the sunrise.  

Add Some Exercise.  If you are not currently exercising, then start with 10-15 minutes per day.  If you are exercising, then consider an increase of 15 minutes per day (up to one hour).  A recent study at Iowa State University, Archer-Eichenberger, showed that lifting weight can improve sleep.  Consider adding resistance training up to three times per week.

In the evening.

Your dinner can have a big effect on how well you sleep.  Although we often think that feeling very full makes us drowsy it can also cause discomfort and contribute to stomach upset when you lie down.  Leave plenty of time to digest your food or consider eating a smaller meal.  Your food selection may also contribute to chronic inflammation.  In Is Inflammation Making You Exhausted? Eat These Foods to Start Sleeping Better Turner makes the connections between poor sleep and inflammation and makes some food suggestions to help improve sleep.  A few of these like cherries, pineapple, and green tea may make light before bed snacks.

Of course, we all want to wind down in the evening and some of us want to be fired up to play video games.  Two beverages imbibed that can interfere with sleep are alcohol and caffeine.  If you are like me and you have trouble staying asleep at night, try limiting your alcohol intake.  General guidance is not to consume either of these within three hours of going to bed.  

Put down the screens.  The blue light from screens interferes with the production of melatonin.  Melatonin is the hormone that makes you sleepy.  Also depending on the content of the images you are viewing you may not be as relaxed at bedtime.  

When you go to lay down.

A soothing bedtime routine will help you wind down for the day.  A shower or a bit of meditation can do wonders for your relaxation.  Focus on allowing yourself to slow down and accept the end of your day.

To help you fall to sleep try Progressive Muscle Relaxation Training.   Michael Grothaus describes his experience with using the technique the military uses which is similar.  There are also several breathing techniques to explore like, 4-7-8 technique.  Holding my breath for seven seconds is challenging for me so I just breathe in and breathe out slowly for twice as long.

Better Sleep Homework

You may download a spreadsheet to track your progress.   If you have a fitness tracker, I suggest you use the tracker also.  You may also want to add columns for your sleep score and any other data you want to add.

And now the assignment.  Keep track of how you are sleeping for four days with no changes.  Then for the next seven days commit to making three changes.  I strongly suggest a consistent bedtime and wake up time be one.  

Pick the changes you want to make.

  • Consistent sleep schedule.
  • No screen time within 30 minutes of going to bed.
  • Use a relaxation technique.  This is a good choice for people who kow they have trouble falling asleep.
  • Avoid large meals three hours before bed.
  • Stop drinking alcohol before bed.  
  • Add meditation before bed.
  • Any other change you think will help you feel more relaxed.

The worksheet will help you keep track of:

  • Time you went to bed.
  • Time you woke up.
  • Total time sleeping.
  • How well-rested do you feel?  One of 1-5 with 1 being very tired and 5 being well-rested.
  • Did You fall to Sleep Quickly,  Same 1-5 scale.
  • How Much Were You Awake During the Night? Same 1-5 scale.
  • In the next five columns, you will answer Yes or No to what change you made.  During the five days pick three from the list or add two of your own. 

Thank you for reading.  Let me know if you will be working on your sleep hygiene.  I will be doing my homework as well.  The final blog in this series will be in two weeks to allow time for each of us to evaluate the results.  

Disclaimer.  The information provided in this article may not be appropriate for all people.  If you are not currently exercising or have or suspect you have conditions like cardiovascular, metabolic or renal disease, then you should consult your physician before considering making any changes suggested. 

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Slumber Your Way To Better Health 

Donna Wurster

Slumber your way to better health.  This is the first of a series of articles I will present.  In this post, I will describe what health concerns can improve with better sleep and its purpose for your body.  I hope you will use this information to jump-start progress in your health areas of focus.   In the second post of the series, I invite you to participate in Sleep Homework for one week.  I will participate along with you.  In the final post of the series, I’ll share my results and I will provide some additional evidence about the longer-term effects of a sleep hygiene program.

What Health Concerns Improve With Sleep?

For many of us, weight gain is an area of concern.  Lack of adequate and poor quality sleep affects hormone levels that cause you to be hungrier.    In addition, when you have low energy and feel fatigued you are less likely to adhere to your exercise program.  So you end up with More Calories in and Fewer Calories out and that equals more weight gain.  Weight gain could contribute to even more health issues.

Increased risk of heart attack and stroke.  How much do you ask?  Studies estimate that people over the age of 45 who get less than six hours of sleep per night are twice as likely to have heart disease (National Sleep Foundation,2018).   Blood sugar regulation is often degraded, possibly leading to diabetes.

Sleep problems interfere with your immune system’s function.  Immune system signaling molecules (cytokines) can lead to chronic inflammation.  This is not the good inflammation that helps us heal from wounds and injuries, but excess inflammation.    Chronic inflammation contributes to artery disease leading to cardiovascular disease.  The list goes on to include type 2 diabetes, arthritis, and depression.  Finally, at a time when we are all concerned about COVID, Irwin 2015, indicates that sleep deprivation may lower the effectiveness of vaccines and increase susceptibility to disease.

Poor sleep is associated with anxiety and depression.   Some people sleep too much and others too little.   Disturbed sleep can contribute to emotional health issues causing us to be more fragile.  Who has not had a bad night’s sleep and not felt that we could deal with the challenges of our days.  There have been times when I have been brought to tears after a poor night’s sleep by the routine challenges at work.  Too much time is spent in fight or flight response so both the brain and the body are affected.  

The fogginess in our minds from fatigue results in a higher rate of accidents.  You may experience poor work performance.  

Many studies have linked inadequate sleep with Alzheimer’s disease. Later in the article, we will see that poor sleep can result in the buildup of amyloid proteins that are linked to the disease.

About 50 to 70 million adults have a sleep disorder.  For many of us it is not insomnia, but poor or inadequate sleep.  Some of the symptoms include:

  • day time fatigue.
  • trouble falling asleep
  • waking too early in the morning
  • unable to fall back to sleep once you wake up.

What is restorative sleep?

Of course, the standard answer we hear is that adults should get 7 to 8 hours of sleep and teenagers should get one more hour.  As many of you already know, being in bed does not mean we get quality sleep.  For people like me who suffer pain from injuries or arthritis during the night, losing an hour or two of sleep each night is not unusual.  A new study out of the University of California (Adams, Heather) has identified “efficient sleepers”  that have Familial Natural Short Sleep (FNSS).  These people can feel perky and energized after 5-6 hours of sleep.   The author refers to  this new study as proof that the quality of sleep is more important than quantity. However, most of the assessments of quality are made subjectively by how a person feels.  

Drake, Christopher L et al. in a Jul 14 journal of clinical sleep medicine article examines how difficult it is to validate the measures of adequate sleep.  They developed and tested a Restorative Sleep Questionnaire (RSQ).  Tools to evaluate   sleep onset or initiation, sleep interruptions, alertness on waking and length of sleep are common.  By using focus groups a nine item questionnaire was developed in two versions.  One version was administered daily and the other weekly.  Both tests were found to have internal consistency reliability (> 0.90).  In the focus group good sleep was described as :

  • falling to sleep easily,
  • sleeping without waking,
  • feeling rested when waking up.

Still, we don’t have an objective measure.  I have read that 20-25 % of the time during sleep spent in REM is one measure frequently.  I use a fitness tracker.  I track total hours slept, amount of time awake, and % of the time in REM.  Normally, when I feel rested is consistent with these measures falling into a certain range.  More about that next time.

How Does Sleep Benefit Your Body?

During the day your brain is busy processing the visual cues it receives.  We speed through our days reacting to events.  Often these activities are taking place automatically without much mindfulness.  During the night our brain cleans itself and removes waste products.  Our brains may shrink by as much as 60% which allows the cerebrospinal fluid to mix with the interstitial fluid.  This mixing washes away wastes like amyloid proteins that accumulate during the day.  The meditative state allows memories to be consolidated.  Some believe our creativity is sparked by the cleaning process resulting in dreams.

Sleep Cycle

Sleep affects several hormones.  The first is melatonin, the sleep hormone. To understand more let’s talk about the hormones involved in the sleep cycle.  We fall to sleep because GABA  (a neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid) is activated.  When we are awake, acetylcholine is secreted by the hypothalamus, which dampens the effect of GABA.  When you are active during the day another chemical , adenosine, builds up and hinders acetylcholine.  As the day ends the blue light from the sun causes melatonin to begin to rise.  Adenosine breaks the wall of acetylcholine and GABA takes over.   As you sleep your melatonin levels peak causing deep sleep.  As your temperature bottoms out and cortisol, the stress hormone rises, then you dream.  When the sun rises melatonin begins to fall and cortisol reaches its peak.   Since cortisol triggers many other hormones, when the cycle is disrupted then fragmented sleep may result.  Also, electronic devices can delay melatonin production causing the onset of sleep to be delayed.

Hormones

The final hormones we will discuss are human growth, hunger hormones (leptin, ghrelin, and insulin), and estrogen and progesterone hormones.  Not only does human growth hormone govern your body’s ability to repair itself, but it also affects how you metabolize sugar.  When HGH is disrupted, then pre-diabetes or diabetes can be complicated.  Poor sleep can mean that not enough leptin is produced leaving the hormone that makes you hungry, ghrelin to run wild.  Ever have a day that you just could not get enough to eat – ghrelin.  Finally, estrogen and progesterone are two of the hormones triggered by cortisol.   In both men and women, these hormones affect thyroid function and can slow metabolism.

Next time we’ll talk about sleep hygiene and make a plan to do some homework.  Sharpen those pencils.   

Please leave a comment.  Let me know what you think or share your story about how sleep is working for you. Contact me to suggest other topics.

Disclaimer.  The information provided in this article may not be appropriate for all people.  If you are not currently exercising or have or suspect you have conditions like cardiovascular, metabolic, or renal disease, then you should consult your physician before considering making any changes suggested.