[[:encoded, "Some of you listeners today may know, but not all might, one of the important tools I use as an accountability coach with the people I work with is the Wheel of Life. The Wheel of Life I use, because not all are the same, has 8 areas that we regularly focus on. One of those areas is health and fitness. Most of the people I work with and many of the people I talk to, at one point in life have tried to lose weight or thought about losing a few pounds so they could be fitter and healthier and ultimately feel better and maybe even live longer. If you have tried to lose weight or thought about it, you are certainly in the majority. If you would like to improve your health and fitness and maybe even lose a few pounds in the process – this special interview we are doing today is for you.\n\nWe are honored today to have an expert with us to talk about health and fitness. Denis Collier is a Registered Dietitian, a Certified Exercise Physiologist and has a Masters degree in Kinesiology. The company he founded specializes in helping individuals reach their most valuable goals by integrating nutrition with a physically active lifestyle. \n\nWe are talking about how many people say they have tried repeatedly to lose weight and had little to no success. Some have probably thought about losing weight but maybe don’t have a plan or know the best way to approach being healthier and fitter. \n\nDenis shares a 5 step approach, a system of “arguing with yourself” to rid yourself of negative beliefs and become more optimistic about doing the things you need to do to lose weight and improve your health, fitness and quality of life in general. He calls it the “A.E.I.O.U. Technique”. \n\nListen and learn! You will receive value from this special interview with our expert, Denis Collier."]]
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Anne Bachrach
The Accountability Coach™
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(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the Accountability Coach podcast where we will discuss topics, ideas, questions and issues related to having a totally balanced and successful life. This is Anne Bakrak. Some of you listeners today may know, but not all might. One of the important tools I use as an accountability coach with the people I work with is the Wheel of Life. The Wheel of Life I use, because not all are the same, has eight areas that we regularly focus on. One of those areas is health and fitness. Most of the people I work with and many of the people I talk to at one point in their life have tried to lose weight or thought about losing a few pounds, so they could be fitter and healthier and ultimately feel better and maybe even live longer. If you have tried to lose weight or thought about it, you are certainly in the majority of North Americans. If you would like to improve your health and fitness and maybe even lose a few pounds in the process, well, this interview is gonna be for you. We are very honored today to have an expert with us to talk about health and fitness. Dennis Collier is a registered dietician, a certified exercise physiologist and has a master's degree in kinesiology. The company he founded specializes in helping individuals reach their most valuable goals by integrating nutrition with a physically active lifestyle. Welcome, and thanks for joining us today, Dennis. - Thank you, I have my pleasure to be here. - Well, so Dennis, some of the people on the call today, including myself, have tried repeatedly to lose weight and had little or no success. Some have probably thought about losing weight, but maybe don't have a game plan or know the best way to approach being healthier and fitter. Maybe some people on the call today have tried enough times to lose weight, but have settled for the, I'm gonna be heavy forever, mentality. So they think, why bother? Well, Dennis, what are we gonna learn from you today that can help us? - Well, I first of all, I agree with you that the person you just described is certainly becoming more and more common in our world today, but add the good news is that does not have to be the case. A person, such a person that you just described has some serious negative beliefs. I believe that are gonna limit them in ever achieving any kind of weight loss or improvement in health and fitness. They're not only limiting beliefs, they're beliefs that are simply gonna sabotage a person so badly that I would suggest it will be impossible to ever have any success in these areas. What I wanna share today is a five step approach, a system of arguing with yourself that I'm doing an air quotes here, and you know, they're listening to me not seeing me, but if you're gonna argue with yourself to reach yourself of negative beliefs and become more optimistic about doing the thing that you need to do to lose weight and improve your health, fitness, and quality of life in general. - Wow, Dennis, that sounds really interesting. - Okay, so don't keep us waiting. Tell us about these five steps. - And I call this the AEIOU technique. Nice to meet you to remember, because I know personally I need things that are easy to remember. Each letter represents a different phase of self-questioning. I adapted this from a fellow by the name of Dr. Martin Siegelman who's a former president of the American Psychological Association and the founding father of a movement called positive psychology. So in my work as a registered dietician, I use this technique to help people like those we have already described, realize their negative limiting beliefs about weight, health, and fitness that are unfounded. - Okay, Dennis, so what's the first step? - Okay, so step A is for alternatives. And how much nothing happens due to just one cause? Why do people latch on to the most insidious one? So if someone has lived their life badly anyway, always coming out of the losing end and might very well have decided, you know, there's something about me, it's beyond my control, my genetics or what have you, that makes it impossible for me to lose weight. And again, like you said earlier, I'm gonna be heavy forever. Okay, fair enough. I'm gonna grant you, that's one possibility. However, is it the only possibility? Certainly not. I would urge you to brainstorm today and write down all the possibilities while you're weighting health or not who you want it to be today. So for example, maybe on your last diet temp, you rationalize that your extra large cafe latte every morning was okay or didn't count somehow, because you just can't function without it. Or maybe another alternative, a core alternative is that even if you were a good thing, I went to the gym four days a week. You know, while you were there, did you exert more effort, maybe kind of watch Oprah on the flat screen in front of the elliptical machine? It actually kind of burns in calories. The first thing you should do is get a good grasp on what all the alternatives as to why you haven't achieved your goal. - Oh, I like that. Writing everything down. Okay, what are all the alternatives and really kind of realizing what the reality of the situation is? So that's great. A for alternatives, I like that. Okay, Dennis, what does the E stand for? - Next step, N is E for evidence. Now, we need to critically evaluate all these possibilities. Searching for any evidence pointing out that the possible distortions in these catastrophic beliefs that we have. Now, the best way to do this is to remove the subjective feelings from the equation and look at objective evidence. The good news is for health and sickness and weight goals, this is very easy to do. The bad news is that most people don't do it. You need to record. I know, Ann, you're a big believer in metrics. And I have to, I think it is a great idea to keep a log, a record of your food intake and your daily exercise, especially while you're in the midst of a weight loss endeavor. The more information you record, the better you'll be able to analyze what's going on. I'm talking about how many calories did you eat per day at the metric to work with. I'm talking about what was your heart rate while you were working out on a huge fan of using a heart rate monitor. They aren't that expensive because it gives us a tangible metric to evaluate how effective were those workouts. And usually, when we go through this process, I can almost guarantee that you won't find any evidence supporting the idea that you did everything, exactly right, and still fail. Usually, it's just the opposite. And Ann, here's the thing, if you didn't record such evidence in your pathway loss attempts, then really, we just stop right here because we've already found an alternative that you haven't tried yet. - Oh, that's really great. Yeah, I'm a firm believer in metrics and I do use a heart rate monitor and I just don't think all the machines at the gym really accurately give you the actual calories burned, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm a firm believer in having your own heart rate monitor setting up individually. And, oh, this is brilliant. Oh, I'm so excited. Okay, Dennis, what does the I in the third step stand for? - Well, I'm glad you're excited. - This is great. - We're gonna get more exciting as we go there, trust me. Okay, so moving along the third step, the I stands for implications. Okay, so what if, and what if, you're the first step and the evidence you find actually proves the negative belief? I'm not saying that might not happen. What if it does happen? Then we need to determine what are the implications of this fact. It's a say you actually followed all your path guide attempts exactly as you're supposed to and they still failed. What does that mean? And I will tell you what it means and it listens very carefully. It means that you failed in every one of your previous attempts. Nothing more, nothing less. It in no way indicates that you are doomed to fail forever. This is a very important lesson that the past does not predict the future. And let me tell you 'cause I'm up stories. This is one of my favorite illustrations at this point. You may know the name Roger Banister. Oh yeah. First person to ever run a mile and under four minutes. Now, the great lessons from his story exists. Since civilization had miles and minutes, we're talking hundreds if not thousands of years, people had been trying to run a mile and under four minutes and no one could. And it was believed to be physiologically impossible for a homo sapien to run a mile and under four minutes and indeed no one ever had until Roger Banister came along and did it in 1954. And not only this man come along and prove that just because something never happened before doesn't mean it couldn't happen, only three years after he proved it, 16 other men had also run a mile and under four minutes. Did you behind the third step eye for implications if you precisely identify what your past failures mean and please don't globalize failures to make yourself think it is impossible to achieve your health and fitness goals? Yeah, that's really brilliant. And I love that story also about Roger Banister. It's really remarkable. What, you know, people just don't think about, hey, the negative thoughts and, you know, hey, I can't do this because nobody else has done that, you know? I can't. And that's out of that if you don't read anything. Yeah, I think it's brilliant. Okay, so what is the fourth one? What does the O mean? Okay, the next exercise is O for options. The next thing I'd like you to do is sit down and make up a list, a long list of different things that you have not tried yet to get your weight and fitness to where you want it to be. If you can't think of it, then they all mean because you've got a professional to tell you an option. And although I am personally such a professional, you might think I have a better interest in people speaking out to someone like me, you know, and I'd be surprised if you couldn't think of a few things yourself. Weight loss is not rocket science. And I am not saying it's easy. It's not easy to execute and to actually do, but for the most part, we all know what we need to do to be healthier and better, eat better, exercise more. Let's come up with some creative options for doing this. And let me interject if one of my own ideas here. One of the really unique and interesting things that I do in my practice is to take a group of non-athletes who are formally overweight and by the time they're done in this option, they are no longer overweight and train for and then complete a big audacious physical challenge. Last summer, for example, I had the honor of working with a group of 12 people who lost a command total of 321 pounds by training for and completing a triathlon. And these are non-athletes, but they did this nonetheless. I have a messy company. Have you ever seen an obese triathlete? - No, I can't say that I have. - How about an obese cross-country skier? - No. - Well, that's another exercise that I love to do. Now, many people I'd love to give these skis and nothing works, and I've tried everything to lose weight. Really? Everything, you're sure? Have you ever tried becoming a triathlete? You can't do that, you know? Have you ever tried becoming a cross-country skier? And all of these options are possible. I still have many others. So the point of step four is to identify all the options you could try. - Yeah, and just to be a triathlete, there's so many different types of races. Some are longer than others, but some are also very short. And, you know, many people, like you said, these 12 people are, you know, more triathletes, but certainly could do something like that. So that's great, that's an impressive story. So what is the final step in the process, Dennis? What does the you stand for? - And I think we're getting more and more exciting as we go along, and this is my favorite one. This is the one that leaves you with no reason, no excuse, no more belief for not doing the things you need to do to improve your weight and health and fitness. Let's say that a person has gone through all the first four steps. They've gone through every alternative, and the evidence has proven that you have really exhausted them all, and the implication is it really is that you are never going to lose weight, and you have no option left. So, and this is a hypothetical case. The line that we used at the very beginning of the interview to summarize the target audience, the whom we're speaking at today, is the person who believes I'm going to be heavy forever. Okay, so now we're talking, this is really true. We've found the person, this is really true for this person now. And the key from me to emphasize is that the best. Here because in all my experience, I've never found such an entire belief to be true, nor do I really think it is even possible for it to be true, but for argument's sake, say you are the one in a billion genetic marvel and this statement truly applies to you. And my third purpose, step five, the you in the acronym, is to challenge the usefulness of such a belief. And the world is very often unfair. What good is it to dwell on something like that? We are better off not even worrying about it. Say the end result of losing weight, it is, we've said it is entirely beyond your control and this hypothetical case. So on, it's entirely and indisputably within your control to keep exercising regularly and to keep eating sensibly and end the value in doing those things even if you never lost one pound. Leading a physically active life style and eating healthy foods are proven to have all kinds of health benefits, disease prevention benefits, psychological benefits, general wellbeing benefits regardless of the effects on body weight. And those things are beautiful because we have direct control over them and they are inherently good in themselves. - Yeah, I have to say that's kind of becoming my favorite area now too. I really like the A, E, I, O, U technique. That's really great and it's so true. We all have choices to make in our life and you can choose to do something or choose not to do something and the benefit you're right is better if you choose to do something that's healthy for you even if you don't see all the benefits, maybe the 100% that you want to or as fast as you want to 'cause they all come eventually, don't they, Dennis? - Absolutely. And I came here to focus on is as I said, these things are good in themselves. That means the bottom line. - Yeah, brilliant. Well, Dennis, we really appreciate you spending your time and expertise with us today. For those of you who might be interested in learning more about Dennis, he has a program called the Fitness Phone. The Fitness Phone is a revolutionary way to consistently access the world's leading health and fitness experts and you can do it from the comfort of your own home. Feel free to review his website by going to www.thefitnessphone.com. It's thefitnessphone.com. We'll begin enjoying the experience of an even greater life quality and total life balance. Aim for what you want. Each and every day. Until next time, make it a great day, today and every day. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
[[:encoded, "Some of you listeners today may know, but not all might, one of the important tools I use as an accountability coach with the people I work with is the Wheel of Life. The Wheel of Life I use, because not all are the same, has 8 areas that we regularly focus on. One of those areas is health and fitness. Most of the people I work with and many of the people I talk to, at one point in life have tried to lose weight or thought about losing a few pounds so they could be fitter and ...
