Winter is coming. Why exercise? Why now?

Posted on September 7, 2020September 9, 2020 by Sol

Winter is coming. Why exercise? Why now?

With a second wave of COVID on the horizon, now is the time to get into that winter exercise routine. As we move into the fall and temperatures drop, many of us will be forsaking our daily quarantine walks and wondering how we will make it through the winter. If you have been healthy, it’s time to lock down your exercise routine and recommit to yourself. So, let’s use this fall as your time to honour your goals.

Starting from what feels like from scratch can be daunting, but here are some things to keep in mind:

Forget about numbers

Some people have lost weight during this pandemic, others have gained. In the end, it doesn’t matter. If there was ever a time to ditch the scale, it’s now. You don’t need some artificial set of numbers driving your output and your effort. Every workout that you participate in means that you aren’t sick and are healthy enough to be exerting effort. Whether it’s a walk with a friend or an all-out sweaty virtual power yoga session, the time you put in is your time.

Focus on what you like

Forget about what you “should” be doing. Now is not the time to try boxing if you prefer a low impact weight session. But winter exercise can be a time to experiment. Maybe you’ve always wanted to try a boot camp class but were too afraid of looking like a complete novice. Take advantage of at home apps and classes to find something new. There is a bonus to learning on your own — you don’t have to compare yourself to anyone. You can play, replay, slow down, or speed through routines until you find one you like.

Exercise makes you happy

You may hate it when you’re in the middle of a workout, but science tells us that exercise relieves pain and stress. Physical activity also stimulates the release of dopamine, endorphins, norepinephrine, and serotonin. These brain chemicals play an important part in regulating your mood. With all this uncertainty, who couldn’t use a brain boost right now?

Exercise builds community

When I opened TrainingSpaces over two years ago, I knew this wasn’t going to be an ordinary studio. I was passionate and focused on inclusion. I strongly believe that no matter your size, background, or experience, exercise is for everyone. Just showing up makes you an athlete — and every single person who walks through the doors of TrainingSpaces is valued. Clients and trainers alike, we are all striving towards our own goals. In this time where we’ve seen so much isolation, anxiety, and depression, having a safe space where you can work out is essential. Seeing a friendly, supportive face is what so many of us need right now.

I hope to see you back either in the studio or hear about your successes as you continue to train virtually with your trainer.

Self-care is about self-preservation, and self-isolation whenever necessary

Posted on April 6, 2020April 6, 2020 by Sol

Self-care: man receiving aromatherapy treatment / Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Self-care is about self-preservation, and self-isolation whenever necessary

As you may have noticed, we’ve been resurfacing previous blog posts when circumstances make it impossible to generate new content every week. Self-care may seem like an odd thing to be thinking about in these turbulent times, what with its connotations of laxity and self-indulgence. But that’s just one way to think about it. The preventative measures currently being urged upon us — social distancing, self-isolation and the like — are all about taking care of ourselves initially. We need to stay healthy in order to help the people around us — so self-care morphs into a broader sense of concern, support, and responsibility for the greater good.

This post originally appeared July 29, 2019. Stay safe.

With all those instagram posts tagged #selfcare and showing lovingly curated avocado toast and bubble baths, it’s easy to mock self-care as a millennial trend. However, the fact is that self-care isn’t just about getting massages and meditating in the sunset.

Self-care is how you take care of yourself. It’s the daily process of making sure you prioritize your emotional and physical needs. It’s how you manage demands on yourself and your time — from work to friends and family to ensuring you get in that workout. It is not selfish. It’s putting on your own oxygen mask before helping those next to you.

Self-care is not just about your mental health. It’s also about caring for your physical self, by eating healthy, taking adequate sleep, caring about your hygiene, exercising regularly, etc.

Sometimes it’s easy to know what we need. However, some of us are so depleted and disassociated from ourselves that we don’t even know where to start. Unless you are really good as establishing boundaries, shutting down technology, and saying “no,” you may need help acknowledging that you need to find time for yourself in your schedule.

Do you regularly:

Skip meals when you are busy
Use food to cope with stress
Cancel workouts to meet work deadlines
Automatically say “yes” to requests without thinking about how it will affect your schedule
Multitask when eating — working or watching TV, checking emails, or reading
Feel guilty if you are not productive

If you’ve said “yes” to any of these, it’s time for you to incorporate self-care in your routine. Easier said than done, right? There are many small ways you can start appreciating yourself immediately. Look for small ways you can include self-care in everyday life. From getting up a little earlier to go for a run to spending time on the weekend preparing meals, these are not tasks but ways to show you that you value yourself.

We need to condition ourselves to take breaks and moments for ourself. The idea that lunch is for wimps that fuelled the 80s culture should be left in the 80s. Being overscheduled and always on doesn’t lead to more productivity. It leads to burnout, heart attacks, and unhappiness.

Is it authentic, or just manufactured influencers? Be wary of ‘advice’ contrived via social media

Posted on March 30, 2020March 29, 2020 by Sol

social media influencers / Image source: appinstitute.com

Is it authentic, or just a manufactured influencer? Be wary of ads contrived via social media

This post originally appeared April 29, 2019.

If you are engaged in social media, and especially Instagram, you are probably familiar with the power of influencers. These are ordinary people, just like you and me, who lovingly curate their feeds with inspirational photos of their meals, exercise routines, glorious sunrises, and breathtaking sunsets. They tag their posts with #blessed, #fitspo, and #empowered — and offer us all a slice of a more perfect life. It can be fun to thumb through the feeds of people of all shapes and sizes living their best lives and offering us that push that we can do it too.

Influencers can be found in all corners of the online fitness social communities. From trainers to fit-at-any-size marathoners to mothers entering their first weightlifting competitions, social media has given voice to those who might not fit the stereotype of a typical fitness devotee.

Recently, high levels of Instagram user engagement have given companies an opportunity to capitalize on users with thousands of followers.These Instagram ads, for which influencers can be paid an estimated $1,000 per 100,000 followers, are selling not just a product but an entire lifestyle. They also might be selling bad fitness and diet-related advice.

9 out of 10 patients look to influencers and online communities when making health and wellness decisions. 94% of people share influencer-driven health information with others.

But let’s think about the reality of these influencers. Are they qualified to provide wellness advice? Or are they motivated by a desire to promote certain products or simply to further their personal brands? Because sponcon (sponsored content) can be positioned alongside other posts, it can be difficult to separate the paid ads from the personal stories.

As you scroll through different feeds, keep an eye out for these paid promotions masquerading as solid lifestyle advice. Because influencers are more likely to be ordinary people and not celebrities, they are more valuable to sponsors and appear more trustworthy. Having 100,000 followers does not make you a fitness expert. It does not make you a qualified trainer or a nutritionist. What it makes you is a person with beautiful photos and a performance of authenticity that appeals to your followers.

Before you take advice from anyone you follow on social media, take a moment to evaluate this advice. Is there a prominent brand name dominating the caption? Could these before and after photos be altered in any way? Are you taking advice from influencers you would never even consider if it came from your best friend, a neighbour, or a casual acquaintance?

If you said answered “yes” to any of these questions, maybe it’s time to click “unfollow”.

Self-care is about self-preservation

Posted on July 29, 2019April 6, 2020 by Sol

Self-care is about self-preservation

Self-care is not just about your mental health. It’s also about caring for your physical self, by eating healthy, taking adequate sleep, caring about your hygiene, exercising regularly, etc.

Do you regularly:

Skip meals when you are busy
Use food to cope with stress
Cancel workouts to meet work deadlines
Automatically say “yes” to requests without thinking about how it will affect your schedule
Multitask when eating — working or watching TV, checking emails, or reading
Feel guilty if you are not productive

Don’t let unhappy high-school memories keep you out of team sports

Posted on June 17, 2019June 16, 2019 by Sol

Coed team sport with green shirts / Image source: atxsa.com/

Don't let unhappy high-school memories keep you out of team sports

Many of us are still recovering from a childhood of being the unco-ordinated person assigned to a team. We werenu2019t even picked u2014 we were just last. These scars run deep and remain barriers that may stop you from joining a sports team or running club as an adult.

But what if you want to join a team? While some of us are happy to go it alone on a 5 K run listening to our favourite podcast, many people benefit from the class group dynamic or the feeling of belonging that comes from playing a team sport.

What keeps so many of us from putting ourselves out there are the ghosts of gym class past. Itu2019s the fear of being laughed at as the only new person among a sea of experts. Will everyone mock me if I show up wearing the wrong clothes? Will I be the only one going right when everyone else is gracefully stepping left?

Well, if you never show up, youu2019ll never know. Your concerns about being the odd person out are keeping you physically out from exploring something new.

As we get older, we have to let go of some of the stories weu2019ve told ourselves over the years. No, you arenu2019t going to be riding in the Raptors’ victory parade, but I would bet that most of those natural grade-school athletes who were picked first wonu2019t be either. At some point, team sports and class fitness become something people do for fun. Itu2019s not a gateway to fame and fortune. Itu2019s a place for adults to get together, learn something new, laugh at each otheru2019s mistakes, and maybe even build friendships that last outside of the class. If you start showing up somewhere regularly, you will probably strike up a conversation about sticky lockers and your instructoru2019s hardcore devotion to playing the same three cool-down tracks with questionable lyrics.

Building a small community with like-minded people who all enjoy the same activity can keep you returning to a class when it gets challenging. Holding each other accountable to show up more than once a week or to attend workshops isnu2019t about being the best. Itu2019s about being there. The toughest part is walking in the door. Being the new person, even if you are an extrovert who could find a friend in a broom closet, is always going to be tough. However, you will find that in most cases people are excited to share something they love with a newcomer. They want you to discover why they are passionate about this activity.

If you have ever considered joining a team or trying something new but are afraid, itu2019s time to be realistic. We all had our first days and we walked by a studio without going in. We were all new once. You just need to gather up your courage and walk through the door. Itu2019s a small first step that can change your life. f

Do you really want to change?

Posted on May 27, 2019 by Sol

Change often comes one droplet at a time / image source: medium.com

Do you really want to change?

One of the biggest reasons why people start working with a personal trainer is that they want to change. There has been a moment of realization when change becomes essential. Whether incited by a past or upcoming doctor’s visit or the inability to get into your favourite pair of jeans, you are propelled to take charge of your health. And the change will begin.

We all embark on change with the best intentions. But the reality is that change is hard. We say we want to commit ourselves to transformation — but this is often a slow process. One of the reasons why people have embraced the keto diet is that it works quickly. Making those adjustments results in significant and quick weight loss. When we see the effects of change and want to continue. When it looks like we’re putting in effort and don’t see results … well, it’s hard to keep on track.

Additionally, it’s easy to say we want to change but when it comes down to putting in the work…that’s a lot harder. It pushes us out of comfort zone and makes us feel vulnerable. We don’t ever want to appear weak or in need of help. It’s the daily armour we put up that allows us to move through a world that is often complicated and cruel.

If you’ve settled changing something in your life, how can you make it last? Well, change has two parts. There is the thought and there is the action. You can say you want to start running three times a week, and you can really want to start running three times a week, but if you aren’t actually running three times a week, then you need to put those runs in your schedule. Do you need to wake up a little earlier to accomplish this? Can you run home from work? If you aren’t looking for solutions and ways to make change part of your daily life, then it isn’t important enough.

With lifestyle changes, the journey is the focus. The results are surprises. They creep up on you when you least expect it. It’s being able to cycle up a hill without feeling winded or sustaining a 5KM run without walking. It’s choosing a salad because you just want a salad, and not because any diet plan tells you to eat salad. It’s prioritizing yourself and your workouts without feeling guilty.

Change happens in tiny increments, so don’t get discouraged. Allow yourself to appreciate the journey and reject quick fixes. In the end, it’s the change that is earned that is the change that lasts forever.

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Diets come and go, but how do you decide which one works for you? Listen to your body

Posted on May 13, 2019May 12, 2019 by Sol

Post-workout meal / image source: Healthline

Diets come and go, but how do you decide which one works for you? Listen to your body

A new diet is introduced and it’s hailed as a fast way to lose weight and get healthy. The culture embraces this diet and celebrates it. Celebrities post before and after photographs and articles citing scientific evidence are published in journals.

Then, everything changes. The backlash begins as the truth comes out. This diet isn’t healthy, it’s too restrictive, it harms your body, or causes severe side effects. Lines are drawn and the information becomes increasingly confusing. For every positive, there’s a negative ready to address each specific claim.

Recently, the keto diet has been in the news because celebrity trainer Jillian Michaels has come out strongly against it. She describes its negative effect on the body. And maybe Michaels is right. However, she is also someone who recommended that people who were gaining weight from antidepressants go off their medication and that it’s okay for pregnant women to occasionally have a drink.

But the truth is that regardless of Michaels’ feelings about the keto diet, the backlash against popular ways of eating is inevitable. Remember Atkins, South Beach, the Master Cleanse, Whole 30, Eat Right for Your Blood Type, fasting, the Mediterranean diet, juice cleanses, paleo, clean eating, weight loss tea, apple cider vinegar, intermittent fasting, coffee enemas…and on and on. Every single one of these diets swept through our culture and was hailed as the new hope of quick and easy weight loss. And only months later, these diet cookbooks fight for space in the bargain bin.

Despite the different rules of diets, they are all aimed at the same basic formula: ingest fewer calories and burn more calories. Eat less, move more. How you trick your body into eating fewer calories is really at the diet’s heart. Whether it’s a deliberate feeding time, constantly drinking liquid, or ingesting protein that sends your body the satiety signals, each diet works the same way.

For some people, having a restricted diet helps them feel in control of their relationship with food. It prohibits feelings of bingeing and stops them from reaching for sugar-filled, high carb snacks. For others, the set of laws that govern diets is enough to shake them out of the misconception that they are eating healthy. These extreme diets can be the wake-up call that you need to assess your habits and help examine your relationship with food.

Where diets become dangerous is when they aren’t actually good for you. And the you is not general, it’s very specific and individual. While your friend may find the keto diet the best way to make healthy changes in her life, you might find yourself struggling. I remember when I was drinking bulletproof coffee in the morning and I felt extreme pains in my side that sent me to the hospital. The ingestion of this type fat was not right for me — and I had to stop immediately. However, I have several clients that put the exact same oil in their coffee and swear by it.

There is no overarching diet that is good for everyone. If you want to try cutting out carbs or trading in a smoothie for a meal, I think you should. But if you are in pain or suffering from weakness and lack of energy, you need to supplement what you are doing with different foods. And your body will actually tell you what you are missing. Those hunger pangs, and I’m not talking about cravings for peanut M&Ms, are your body telling you what it needs. From meat to more vegetables, listening to your body will help you navigate the complicated waters of eating.

Diets may come and go. You might find one that works for you, or you might laugh at the time you ate cabbage soup for a week and spent more time in the bathroom than at your desk. What isn’t negotiable is listening to what your body needs and not being afraid to break from an extreme eating routine.

Is it authentic, or just a manufactured influencer? Be wary of ‘advice’ contrived via social media

Posted on April 29, 2019April 29, 2019 by Sol

Is it authentic, or just a manufactured influencer? Be wary of ads contrived via social media

9 out of 10 patients look to influencers and online communities when making health and wellness decisions. 94% of people share influencer-driven health information with others.

If you said answered “yes” to any of these questions, maybe it’s time to click “unfollow”.

Special-occasion weight loss and what happens the day after

Posted on April 1, 2019April 13, 2019 by Laura

Special-occasion weight loss and what happens the day after

This post originally appeared June 18, 2018.

I’ve had a lot of clients come to me with a specific goal or date in mind. It’s the wedding dates or the high-school reunions that have motivated them to take the first steps to weight loss. Whether powered by a desire to transform themselves or fit into a magical size, these are some of the most committed people that I’ve ever seen.

They meet with me multiple times a week.

They follow the diet rules. (BTW, I hate the word “diet.”)

They track their food and obsessively count calories.

And they count down to that special day.

And, not surprisingly, many of them achieve their goals. When you’re dedicated and have an end date in mind, your own laser focus can take you wherever you need to go. As a trainer, I work with my clients to target specific areas and celebrate weight-loss milestones. I love seeing my clients achieve their goals, but there’s always this little voice in my head that haunts every weigh-in.

“What about the day after?” it says.

Don’t backslide

Because I’ve seen it happen so many times. The day after the marathon is completed or the cake is cut. What happens next? What happens when real life sets in and there’s no focused end date for this fitness-first mentality?

Sadly, I’ve seen the most motivated people cancel workouts and slide back into unhealthy habits without a solid goal and a date. I’ve seen all the good work replaced with weight gain and frustration. Without the focused goal date, it’s difficult to get re-motivated until the next big event. We’ve talked about the challenge of maintaining commitment before. And the cycle continues.

That’s why I always recommend that my clients train for life — real life and not a cut-off date. By integrating healthy habits into the everyday, you can avoid the disappointment of special-occasion weight gain … that follows special-occasion weight loss. Focusing on overall wellbeing develops patterns and a healthy baseline.

So, train for today and not tomorrow.

Laura’s question of the week

Have you ever resolved to lose x amount of weight for a specific occasion? What was it for?

Wedding?
Christening?
Bar / Bat Mitzvah?

Were you able to maintain it? Let us know!

Jesus and the Apostles didn’t binge at the Last Supper, and neither should you

Posted on February 11, 2019April 22, 2019 by Sol

Repeat after me: Jesus did not binge. / Image source: glittergraphics.org

Jesus and the Apostles didn’t binge at the Last Supper, and neither should you

Have you ever decided to start a diet on a Monday and spent the entire weekend indulging in everything that you will not be able to eat once the diet begins? It’s not surprising that if you are about to embark on a restrictive diet, you want to eat all the foods that will be off limits. From a string of chocolate bars to stuffing ourselves at a family gathering, we promise once the diet begins we will say goodbye to the sugar, fats, carbs, and processed treats that we love so much.

But this sabotages our diets before they begin.

Last Supper Syndrome is part of the vicious dieting cycle. If you are going to experience famine, why wouldn’t you feast? This knowledge drives you to eat as if you will never be able to eat these special treats again. And we begin our new diet with feelings of guilt, punishment, and fear.

We know we shouldn’t feel that eating healthy is something negative. But if we focus on deprivation and dividing food up into positives and negatives, we are stuck in a constant cycle:

Start the diet feeling unhappy and scared, focusing on forbidden foods
Break down and eat something that isn’t permitted by the diet
Feeling guilty about failing
Make a plan to diet even harder the next time.
Go back to step 1.

By falsely associating the foods we love with relaxation and happiness (and associating diet with the hard work and effort), we fool ourselves on a regular basis. If we are going to succeed, we need to create a healthy relationship with food.

Foods aren’t good or bad — those are just the labels that we put on them. By making your special forbidden foods part of your regular diet, they will lose their appeal. After all, how many times do you swear off pasta and find yourself thinking of pasta…all the time? These associations that come with deprivation only build a bigger mystique and entice us to break our commitment to clean eating.

Developing a healthy relationship with food can be a lifelong challenge. From comfort to reward to a signifier of celebration and companionship, detangling nourishment from emotions is a difficult process. By thinking about how we view food and examining its hold on our emotions, we can start one meal (or even one snack) at a time to evaluate this relationship.

Being healthy isn’t about consuming as much as possible before an arbitrary start date. It’s about being kind to your body and your mind and untangling ourselves from the constant diet cycle.