On obesity and psychology: Tips for convincing the mind to develop better eating, exercise habits

The common cure for obesity and weight loss, at least for most individuals, is rather simple. Burn more calories than you consume. Eating healthy foods is part of that solution as is eating less. Meanwhile, exercise will help burn more calories. It also has positive effects on a person’s mental well-being.

As part of its reporting on the relationship between psychology and obesity, the Southeast Missourian interviewed Laura Vollink, a registered dietitian, and Brandon Job, a personal trainer at Mercy Fitness Center. Here are some tips they gave on overcoming psychological and emotional hurdles.

Know your environment

Registered dietitian Laura VollinkNathan Gladden ~ ngladden@semissourian.com

Vollink: I think one of the biggest things that I talk about with my clients is environment, you know. And I think setting our environments up in a way that can help us be successful is a great first step. We live in this food flood, this culture that's centered around food with everything that we do. When you meet a friend, it's over coffee, or it's over drinks or it's to dinner, or when you gather and you socialize, I mean, everything is focused around food, or even driving down a street and you're smelling Burger King on Broadway, there's food is all around us. When we're talking about this, one of the things that I challenge people is to think of an environment where there is not food present. I mean, we've come up with a sterile operating room, that’s pretty much it among maybe some others. So, you know, the fact is food is all around us. So coming up with ways to either be prepared in those situations, or especially in our homes, is sometimes where we struggle the most, and homes should be that place of nourishment, a place where we feel safe and can make choices without being tempted all the time. So I think sometimes it starts with setting up your environment for success.

Small steps first

Personal trainer Brandon JobNathan Gladden ~ ngladden@semissourian.com

Job: So usually, our biggest obstacle is kind of the misconceptions about exercise and what is an acceptable level of exercise to see change, kind of what we see is one extreme or the other. So either go from zero activity to something six or seven days a week and, really, that's unrealistic for habit change, even someone who's a pretty fit and active person, that's a lot. So getting those expectations drawn down to where you know, if we're doing something, some activity, two or three days a week, that's fantastic. So I like to start people with more reasonable expectations on what it actually takes to kind of benefit your health and fitness.

Vollink: I think that can be overwhelming (to begin a weight loss journey after a diagnosis). You know, when, when you receive news like that, or you're feeling that kind of way, I think that's overwhelming. So it kind of goes back to the all or nothing, where it's like they might be thinking in their head, “I've got to change everything. I've got to do this”. So even making one small change, maybe it's having one less soda in a day, maybe it's walking for 10 minutes before lunch or after lunch, or something like that. Maybe it's reducing, or not having a late night snack, or reducing my portion, name one small thing that you want to do. Working on that and focusing on that, I think people don't realize what kind of benefit you receive from doing that and maybe it doesn't affect the scale immediately, or affect what you're trying to reach, health-goal wise. But I think it can be empowering, like when you can do something and it's, you know, even if it's something small, I think it can build confidence. And I think it can be impactful toward your journey.

Think of long-term habits

Vollink: I do have a lot of people who come in here with some preconceived ways of eating. There's kind of an overload of information available about nutrition. And so I think a lot of what I do here is help people rifle through that and kind of work through some of those myths. A lot of times things are overcomplicated, where we come in with these really specific ways of eating, or these super restrictive, specific diets. I challenge my clients to think, okay, maybe you might experience some short-term weight loss on this restrictive diet. Maybe it came from an Instagram influencer or from Googling what to do, but you might experience short-term success. But I encourage people to look into the long term and make those small changes that realistically, they can see themselves doing for a long time.

Let go of shame and guilt

Vollink: I actually had a woman who chose to start one of our programs, and it's been a long time coming for her. We've had multiple conversations, and she's made the decision to try to get back on the right track. And, I mean, there were tears of emotion involved in the decision to make that change. Absolutely, I think there's shame and guilt for maybe letting yourself get to a certain point, where people are maybe embarrassed by that. And from what I've seen, especially on the food side of it, people have such complex relationships with food. It's very deep. You know, it's easy for me to sit here and say, “Oh, well, if you just do this, this and this, like, sure, we'll lose weight and be good”. But the relationship is so much more complex than that. And I think we use food in a lot of ways to provide us comfort, to relieve stress, you know, we even like providing food for others. We do as a, you know, as a, thank you, as a comfort to help.

I have a 20 Week Weight Management class, and we have different topics for each class, and one of them is actually called Good Grief. And we go through the five stages of grief and relate them to the process of making changes, lifestyle changes and food changes, and things like that.

It's sometimes validating for those people, I think, to kind of understand that they are feeling those things like as they're changing behaviors and lifestyle and kind of giving things up, and that's a difficult thing to realize or to accept.

There will be times where, you know, you eat and go off the plan, or you know something happens and you can't do that one habit you're trying to change. And I think we don't do a good enough job of giving ourselves some grace when something like that happens. I think we talk a lot about quick recovery, right? So trying to prioritize and be as intentional as we can when eating off plan, but just knowing that sometimes something gets the better of us, but it doesn't have to continue to influence our next choices. We have the opportunity to get back on track. … It is very important to just give yourself the grace. Guilt is nonproductive

Finding space, then balance with pleasure foods

Vollink: I'll challenge my clients, like, you know, OK, like, this is great. You've cut out sugar, you've cut carbs, or whatever it is, my challenge is to ask them, “So you're never going to eat a cookie again for the rest of your life? You're never going to have a piece of cake?” And the fact is that they are going to and so kind of our approach is, OK, maybe some of those things you might need to back away from for a little bit to put some space in between you and whatever it is that might be difficult for you to control but, ultimately, we need to figure out how to bring those things back into your diet in a controlled way. My philosophy, I guess, is eating generally healthy most of the time, but giving yourself some wiggle room to allow for those you want to enjoy. … People are on this pursuit of perfection, which I think we need to kind of blast through.