Don’t forget the ‘self’ in selflessness

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/12/2020 (1768 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Are you prioritizing the most important person in your life? The one you see staring back at you in the mirror every morning? Yes, that’s you. Wait a minute. No grown adult would be that selfish, right? Wrong.

Let me explain where I’m coming from with this. There is absolutely nothing in this world I wouldn’t do for my family, and it’s the reason I put such an emphasis on my own health. If I never make time for self-care, I’ll be short tempered with my daughters sometimes. If I stay up late, eat junk and go through the motions each day, I won’t be setting a good example. If I neglect my health to the point I get sick, I can’t support them the way I want to.

Make sense? Yes, it’s easy to slip into bad habits right now. I’ve noticed myself slipping at times as I no longer have set times in my calendar where I leave the house to go to a gym.

But something is always better than nothing. And it’s by being selfish that you can better serve those you care about. My client Dave recently admitted his breaking point was when his five-year-old son told him “Daddy, you can’t play with us because you have a big belly and it’s not safe for your heart.”

Ouch. It is not selfish to look after yourself. That’s the message here. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Especially in these challenging times we’re in, all cooped up at home. During this difficult time, when children are home and stress is running high, it’s more important than ever.

Another reason? A bit of aerobic exercise (at least 10 minutes) increases levels of BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor) and other neurotransmitters, which is basically fertilizer for the brain, helping to maintain the life of your brain cells and grow new ones. If you’re struggling to solve a work problem, a quick walk outside may be exactly what you need to figure it out.

Ultimately, when you can show up as the best version of you, you’ll have more energy to play with your kids. You’ll have more energy to play with the spouse. You’ll have more energy to play in the boardroom at the game of business. It’s a win-win-win all around.

The cure for night-time snacking

Q: What to do when the chips are calling your name? I find them extra hard to resist during the current lockdown.

A: If you’re human, you’ve probably struggled with nighttime snacking at one time or another. It’s not simply a lack of willpower fuelling your night-time binges.

Night-time eating tends to align with how our ancestors lived. During the day, it made sense to prioritize going out to hunt or forage for food. When it was dark, it made sense to stay close to home and eat and fuel up for the next day’s activity. But that’s a problem in today’s society of sedentary jobs and readily available, highly processed food.

With my client, Debbie, this scenario played out each night after she put her daughter in bed. As soon as she’d sit down on the couch, she’d hear a faint voice calling to her from the kitchen pantry. No, she wasn’t going crazy. It was the bag of Lay’s ketchup chips whispering sweet nothings in her direction.

Maybe you’ve experienced the same temptations? And maybe you manage — from sheer willpower alone — to look in the pantry and not pull the bag out. But more often than not you’ll lose that internal tug of war.

Some nights she’d fight the urge but most of the time she’d self sabotage, vow to have a few (and eat more than a few) and feel guilt afterwards.

What was the fix? We simply built 300 calories of chips into her daily allowance. After all, if your diet calls for 1,900 calories and you stay under that, eating 300 after 9 p.m. won’t make a difference to your success or failure. It’s just like a financial budget. Spend under budget for the day or month and you’re still in the green.

Studies found that night-time eating was not associated with weight gain, except in those individuals who ate excess calories over and above what they needed. You don’t have to swear off nighttime snacks completely, but it’s important to be mindful of your portions so you don’t end up overdoing it. If you know you can’t moderate a certain food, try to keep it out of the house.

Q: Any truth to a slow metabolism? Can some people lose weight easier than others?

A: If you’ve struggled to lose weight, you might think you were born with a slow metabolism.

I believed that when I struggled to lose 60 pounds in my 20s. On one level there are genetic differences among us, right from our appetite and desire to eat to the little microbiome in our gut that influence how much calories one absorbs. Plus, some people are just wired to naturally be more active and that changes their metabolism some.

But the good news is, counterintuitively, heavier people generally have higher metabolic rates than their leaner and lighter counterparts and can diet on more calories. It just makes sense on paper. A bigger body requires more calories to maintain and can diet on more calories than someone 20 pounds lighter.

But calories alone don’t paint the full picture. High cortisol (the stress hormone) and a condition called insulin resistance can muddy the waters and both are commonplace if you’ve been carrying extra pounds for a while and live a stressful life. A tell-tale sign of insulin resistance and high cortisol is a distended belly (waistline over 40 inches for men and 35 inches for women) and high fasting blood-sugar levels.

If you’ve tried dieting by cutting calories and carbs, joined a gym for a while and worked your butt off, but didn’t see results, it’s possible you need a different approach. The conventional methods of cutting carbs and doing endless cardio or intense workouts might make the situation worse.

I’ve been experimenting with a new solution to combat insulin resistance and its by-product belly fat. With my approach, we encourage you to eat carbs when they’re most needed and depleted after a workout and minimize their intake when you’re sedentary sitting at your computer.

An analogy to explain this is gassing up your car. If you never drive your car, topping up the fuel tank is only going to spill over and be wasted. If you load up on calories and carbs and don’t move your body, it spills over as well (into your love handles and midsection).

However, if you drive your car regularly, you have to fill it up often. If you don’t, you will run out of gas. Same applies with your body and calorie and carb intake. The right amount of carbs help reduce that stress hormone, cortisol, too. However, running your car on empty can “stress” the system and cause issues with operations. Same thing happens to your body with extreme exercise combined with poor sleep and high stress.

In the end, we must account for calories to lose weight, but we can put ourselves in the best situation to succeed by doing it in a smarter, more efficient way. This allows you to step off the yo-yo dieting merry-go-round and obtain lasting results with less extreme methods. Simple is the secret. A win-win all around.

Mitch Calvert is a Winnipeg-based fitness coach for men and women like his former self. Heavyset in his 20s, he lost 60 pounds and now helps clients find their spark and lose the weight for life. If you want to make the most of the last month of the year and boost your overall health and sanity during these challenging times, visit mitchcalvert.com to grab yourself a free diet cheat sheet or inquire about his virtual coaching challenge.