At some point in our lives, most of us have stepped on the scale in the bathroom, looked at ourselves in the mirror, with a raised critical eyebrow. Most of us aren’t exactly thrilled with the readout when we look down between our feet, or how that bikini fits. Weight and physical conditioning, in part thanks to excessively altered fashion standards on the cover of your supermarket magazines, have set standards that are as unrealistic as they are deceiving.
We all have struggled with the emotion we feel behind our personal condition. We want to be better. We want to feel better. We want to be better tomorrow than we were yesterday. We want to be more.
A good portion of wanting to be better, your physical improvement happens at the gym, such as The Athlete Lab. The other part happens in your kitchen and is inherently tied to what we are feeding ourselves. The culprit? The vast majority of us struggle with the consequences of what food does to our bodies. We tend to focus on what we eat too much of, or alternatively, what we need to eat less of. Rarely does anyone mention that food is about balance and smart choices that accommodate who you are, what you do and how you go through your life.
You’ve heard the familiar line of , “I would be so skinny if I didn’t eat so much ice cream” or maybe something like “If I could just give up pop, I’d probably be able to fit into those jeans that fit me last year.” Emotionally we tend to veer towards, “If I eat less, I will be thinner”, or have less body mass.
There are a few things wrong with that concept, the concept of less. If you’re like me, someone who wishes pop were a health beverage, you would probably lose a few pounds if you gave it up completely. BUT. If I told you that you are to never drink a single drop of soda again….EVER…. what do you think would be constantly on your mind? Sprecker’s. Root. Beer. Well, for me anyways. Maybe for you it’s Barq’s, but I’d rather not argue about Root Beer.
What if the concept we have is correct, but the mindset isn’t? What if we changed the wording of some things….
Maybe, instead of thinking about drinking less pop, we should focus on drinking more water. My guess is, you’re probably not drinking enough water in a day – fair guess?
Did you know that in a typical day you should be drinking half of your body weight in ounces at the minimum?
If you exercise you should add about 16 ounces per hour of exercise on top of the daily minimum.
That’s a lot of water. If I focused just on trying to drink that much water, I’m not going to have a lot of room for sugary drinks.
See what happens? I didn’t say that you can’t have pop, I’m just telling you to add water to your diet. Consequently, the sugar-water intake decreases because of it.
Same goes with a lot of other things. When people talk about going on a diet, they tend to lean towards having to eat less and constantly feeling hungry. I would argue that most people are actually not eating enough. Yes, eating a lot of the wrong things, but not enough of the good stuff. You wouldn’t put unleaded fuel in a diesel engine, so why put unhealthy food into your stomach? It may taste good when you eat it, but the feeling you get afterwards is that of guilt followed by the urge for a nap. You just refueled and you’re tired? That doesn’t make much sense!
We need to change the focus of less, to focusing on becoming more.
Essentially when we talk about dieting its because we want to lose weight, or fit into smaller clothes. We want to look like those people we see in magazines. Those air brushed, photo shopped, not-real human beings.
Here’s where it gets personal. Bear with me… I eat clean. I’m 5’4” and hover between 135 and 140 pounds. I am fit. I am healthy. But, Oxygen would never ask me to be on the cover of their magazine. I have stretch marks and a little bit of loose skin from when I was pregnant with my sons. I don’t have rail thin legs and I have a booty on me. I am a real human being, with a body to show it.
I am more human than those people in the magazines, because I am un-edited. At The Athlete Lab, we want to focus on making you more, and never making you less. We want you to eat more of the right things, be more mobile with your body, lift more weights, run more, have more confidence in yourself, and enjoy life more.
As a coach, it is my job to provide you with the tools to becoming more human. I will provide you with nutrition articles and advice, as well as personal tips and tricks to work on outside of the gym to help where you are struggling inside the gym. If you’re a rather tight individual, I’ll provide you with specific stretches to help you become more mobile. If you’re struggling with a specific lift, I will help break down the movement so that you become a better lifter, If you struggle with running, I will help you become a better runner. Whatever it is you need to become more, I’ll be there for you every step of the way.
Our athletes at The Athlete Lab come to the gym to be better their physical condition and outlook on life. In short, to be more human. We give you the proper tools to be more efficient and safer movers, and we teach you how to eat better so that you have lasting energy all day. We change lives. We don’t diet, we don’t focus on the shape or size of our bodies, but rather put our focus on just how amazing the body that we have actually is. Your body is already amazing, regardless of how much you weigh or what you look like, we are here to take you to the next level. You dream of it, we’ll help you make it your personal reality.
I’ll see you at the gym,
Coach Megan