Episode 11: An Exercise Professional’s Thoughts on Intuitive Eating, HAES, and Obesity with Damien Michel, MS, CSCS, CPT
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Episode Transcript
Participant #1:
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Upbeat Dietitians. I'm Emily. I'm Hannah. Welcome back to this episode. We are joined today by another very special guest we have with us today, Damian Michael. I met Damian at Purdue. Kind of like Brendan and Anna, our previous guest. If you're not sensing the theme here that we're kind of having, Damian was actually my big boss. When I worked as a personal trainer at Purdue, I will let him introduce himself and talk about what he's doing, what he's up to and all that good stuff. So Damian, take it away. Yeah, absolutely. And before we go any further, Hannah saying my last name perfectly correct shows just the level of friendship that we have. So if anyone's questioning our loyalty as friends, check that. Okay. Okay. You stuck the landing perfectly. So thank you. Now, all jokes aside, though, everyone hope everyone is doing well. As Hannah mentioned, my name is Damien Michael. I kind of do a few things professionally right now. So my main job, my big boy job, might say I'm the coordinator of fitness at Florida Atlantic University, down in sunny South Florida, in Boca Raton. That's my typical job. Kind of a fancy way of saying I oversee the personal training and group fitness Department down there. It's actually really cool, because that's my alma mater where I got my bachelor's degree in exercise science, health promotion. So it's been wonderful going back there. And then also the founder and head coach of the Shift Method Fitness and Education LLC, which kind of summed up nicely. It's a platform that focuses on personal training as well as virtual services, whether it be program design or virtual personal training as well as making educational content kind of like the upbeat dietitians are doing here. That's a little bit about me. Yeah, I do see the TSM merchiegot on there. I love it. That's right. Check it out, guys. Thank you. Well, we want to spend today talking a lot about
Participant #1:
again. We had Brendan on the podcast. I think he's coming out later, though. So scratch that. We want to go into a lot about personal training and just fitness in general, because, Emily, I talk a lot about nutrition as dietitians. We haven't gotten a lot into exercise a whole lot yet. So that's kind of our goal today talking about that and sort of a correlation with nutrition as well. So our first actual question, though, has to do with intuitive eating and haze. So Emily and I have touched on intuitive eating a little bit already on here, but we have not gotten into haze yet. We plan on doing a whole episode on that because it is a very deep topic. But our question for you, Damien, we love to hear your point of view on this is I guess the question is that some professionals and exercise are kind of skeptical of intuitive eating and also haze as well. So what are your thoughts on this as an exercise professional? Yeah, these are really good questions, and I think the two are distinct. I want to separate them, and I guess I'll start with intuitive eating. So my understanding, of course, I'm not the Rd here. As Hannah mentioned, I'm the personal trainer, the Griffith instructor, the strength and conditioning coach. So please, if I say anything, cut me off. But intuitive eating from my understanding, from listing the RDS from doing my own research is mainly just the philosophy of building healthy relationships with food, not separating food into this is good. And this is bad. Kind of getting rid of, quote, unquote diet culture, making sure to help people understand that diet is just the way that you eat food. It doesn't have to be that you're on Keto or you're on Atkins or whatever it may be. It's just building that healthy relationship with food and then using some strategies which I would consider more. So I guess individualistic strategies finding out what works best for the person. Whether that's maybe these diets that are called fad diets. Maybe they do work for you, but we're introducing them in a healthy manner, also making sure we're being honest with why these diets work or using strategies that work on behavior change, like, hey, making sure when you're at the dinner table, maybe you're doing something social with your family rather than doing something, quote, unquote mindless watching TV, Netflix, et cetera. Paying attention to your food, finding schedules for your food. Certain types of behavior changes that you can find that are going to help you maybe have a better relationship with food. And then kind of. The last point that I see is when you're making these behavior changes kind of making a distinction between, yes, being healthy with food, understanding biological hunger versus kind of, I guess you could say the emotional side of hunger, which is, yes, respect your body when you physically feel you're hungry, whether it's from just that time to eat again or you did a really hard workout. So it's time to fuel your body and also understanding when you're full, like, hey, it's okay. You don't have to force feed yourself. Or if you feel like you need a little bit more food in your body to go ahead and give yourself permission to eat. Do you guys kind of feel that's kind of what intuitive eating is? You guys are more so the experts on that end. Yes. I think that was a really good way of putting it awesome from my perspective, when I hear this, this just makes me smile because everything that I talk about when it comes to coaching is there are rules and regulations when it comes to program design, for example, or working with a client. But there are very few absolutes. I look at the individual as a person first, take my knowledge and their program specifically to them. Intuitive eating leaves a lot of Gray areas. It's like what works best for the person forming healthy relationships, focusing on behavior change and how this person can work to better their lives and also this whole dichotomy between good and bad. We hear this all the time with exercise. Knee extensions are bad for you. Upright rows are going to destroy your shoulders. No, they're not. It's all about how we do them, the dosage in which we do them. And why are we doing these particular things right? There's nothing wrong with eggs, but if you ate 30 eggs a day, that might be a problem just from a caloric. I mean, props to you if you can do it, man, I love eggs, but it might not be the best thing from a calorie maintenance standpoint. Right. So I really think it goes in line with the whole autonomy focusing on the individual standpoint from wellness. Yes. I love that. I think what I see a lot of times with exercise professionals, whether it's trainers, coaches, whatever it may be is they think of it as just like they eat whatever you want diet because we force so much with it, like listening to your hunger cues. No food is good or bad, but that doesn't mean you're only eating snicker bars all day long. Like it is more about learning those hunger cues. So you do crave other food Besides those sugary things you're currently craving because they're off limits to you in your head. So I think that's usually the I guess, fear, if you will, that trainers and things often do have with that style of eating. Well, here's the thing. And I'm sure we'll talk more about this as we get into help at every size and just some stats about obesity. Whatever we're doing isn't really working. So my philosophy, like, what's the quote, the definition of craziness is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. We keep telling people, you're just not disciplined enough. You're just not this. You need to stop being lazy. You need to do this. You need to cut that out. We've been saying that for decades and nothing is changing. So that tells me that we probably need to change our approach to what's going on and also same thing with fitness. I know a lot of these have similarities, like the whole boot camp instructor side of, like fitness, where it's like, you need to do this and you make people feel, I guess, small for lack of a better term. Very few people respond positively to that. So putting people in this narrow box of like, you have to stick to this diet if you don't, you're the problem. You're weak, you're lazy. Et cetera. Most people are not going to respond positively to that. And in our culture not saying that the language would necessarily directly cause issues we see, like eating disorders. But I would be remiss to say those aren't contributing factors. So, yeah, I think we need to do a better job, and we might as well start trying new things. And this, by all accounts, seems to be making sense. Yeah. I hope it does become something that is more widespread, more than just among RDS, because it is so important for, like you said, too, fitness is also another thing that can be incorporated into it's just so much more than just nutrition. It's mental health as well. I hate seeing lifestyle, but it really is a lifestyle change. No, it is.
Participant #1:
I understand the fear. I think you and I Hannah, talked about this when we were mentioning pockets. I always try and separate people from ideas, right? You're not the sum of your ideas. You are more than that. And I always like to start with the presupposition. I know there's bad people, but that people are coming from a place of genuine care, right? Most people in the fitness industry do it because they want people to better their lives. There's the Con person that just wants a quick buck or whatever. But I understand the hesitation, like you mentioned. Oh, it's just you eat everything you want. You're going to mess up my client's success. They're just going to eat all the candy bars, all the sugar, all the candy, whatever, et cetera. And that's going to derail their progress. I understand the fear and the hesitation. I think what needs to happen is we both got to start always with what's our goal? Let's make sure we got our goals down, that we all want the same thing, people to get better. Let's make sure we got our definition straight. And then let's be rational and talk about the science what's going to work best for our person. At the end, we have to put our biases aside if we want to better help our person, because, hey, I'll be the first one to say if I'm trying something and I'm wrong, it hurts. But I'm going to do my best to say I fucked up. I got to change my plan. Or if Hannah, for example, if you gave me some advice with my client, this strategy that you're trying, it may not be the best thing. Why don't you try this? It's going to hurt my pride a little bit because I thought I had it right. But I'm willing to change because it's going to be best for my person. Yeah, exactly. I love that we are always trying to preach, like, patient or client centered care here, and that just goes right along with that. So good. Absolutely. So next thing we're going to focus on is the health at every size. Right? Let's do it. Yeah. This one I have mixed views on, and I definitely want to start make sure I got again like I did before. Make sure I got my definition right. So my understanding of health or healthy at every size is that there's no such thing as a one size fits all body. Right. There's diverse healthy bodies mainly as well. Right. Health doesn't just look like six foot tall, skinny blonde for lack of better term. Right. It's spectrum, like we talk about with a lot of things. Things I like about this, I guess, is that kind of like the main concept you all would say when it comes to health and every size, I'd say so. I think the biggest thing I've taken away from Hayes is you're not able to judge someone's health status based on how they look. I think that's the biggest thing I've personally taken away from it. And the research that I've done, and it kind of removes weight from treatment is another thing that I've seen a lot about it, too. Like a Hayes physician, for example, probably wouldn't use a person's weight very much in the treatment of that patient. Got you. I think that's a good point. Yeah. This is where it gets tricky. I'll start with things that I really like about it. First and foremost, representation is a good thing. Let's just start with the pre supposition that. Let's just assume if you were at this size, it may not be best for you health wise, even if that's true, those people should be represented because we hope that those people feel represented in a way that they want to be encouraged to be more physically active or adopt healthy behaviors. The biggest example I could think of was maybe two years ago, the world caught on fire when there was a mannequin that was slightly larger than your standard mannequin. The world lost the shit. And I'm like, first of all, mannequins in general, don't look like people, right? They're all taller than most people. They're thinner than most people. So for men and women, right? The guy Mannequin is jacked beyond recognition. They like an NFL player, and the female is you can basically see through or without. I want to be very clear, too. That's not to dismiss people who actually have that body size. I don't want to do that because there are people who are naturally built like that, and they shouldn't feel weird or uncomfortable in their body as well. What I am saying is just like any body type that's a very small proportion of body types. So there's nothing wrong with showing larger people, taller people, shorter people, whatever it may be. So the fact that you're showing that and look anecdotally speaking, one of the biggest things I hear from people, it tends to be more so women. But I know men say this as well is that I can't even fit in athletic clothes and, like, I want to feel somewhat good while I'm at the gym. Feeling good and you're uncomfortable in your body doesn't mean that you're comfortable where you are and that you don't want to change. So they're like, I can't even find athletic attire that I really like. I'm going to Walmart and gain these uncomfortable clothes. I don't really want to wear them. And then they're not very flattering. So I'm like, Man, I don't even want to go to the gym. And I'm like clothing stopping you. We're failing, if that's the point, man. So when people freaked out the domainic and I was like, That's insane. So I definitely think representation is a big thing. I also understand this from a biological standpoint. We're all built a little different. So it's expected to see different people, different sizes. Right? You got taking the extremes. The NFL offensive lineman, who's you're going to tell me that guy is not healthy, that man will run through anything. He's very strong, very able bodied. But then you also have on the other extreme end of athletic, you have gymnast, very small, very petite, maybe muscular and wiry, but completely opposite side of the spectrum. And then you have everything in between. So I definitely agree. You can't just look at someone necessarily. I know they're healthy. The part where I start getting tricky about it. And I think Emily kind of mentioned it a little bit. Is it's not using weight as necessarily an indicator of health per se? This gets tricky. I'm seeing and hearing a little bit from it's not really mainstream. I would say it's just kind of coming into the conversation of health and fitness, where I'll hear the general public and some professionals saying that obesity doesn't matter, that you being obese has no indication of negative health outcomes. And that's not true. I'm open to being wrong, but my understanding and I got some stats that I'll bring up obesity is correlated pretty well with a lot of physiological issues. And that isn't to say that people who are obese should be treated any differently. People who are dealing with obesity shouldn't have to feel less than or think they're different or value themselves less than that's. Just saying at that point in time, where your body is, you're dealing with something for lack of a better term. I guess you could say you're in some way not as healthy as you could be. Just like when anyone's dealing with any other kind of physical issues that they're dealing with. It's important to separate those things. But when I start seeing something like weight doesn't matter or excess at a possibility doesn't matter. As a trainer, I take issue with that. And as someone who has an exercise science background, I take issue with that because, yes, in school we learned it. But on my research that I do on my own, of course, because you want to go past school. I'm also seeing like time and time again, like we're getting bigger. Our health is getting worse. Some of the top conditions that cause death in the United States are directly linked to obesity. Things like cardiovascular disease, cancer, type two, diabetes. All these things are linked to obesity very well. So when I start seeing that, I start getting a little, I guess confused is the word to say. I understand. I guess why they would say that, because when people are sick, when people are dealing with obesity and their health isn't well, we want to deal with it from a compassionate standpoint. That's the first thing right. Being rude to people is never going to be good or productive. It's going to diminish them. It's going to make them feel small. I always give the example. It's important to be Truthful. But me telling my client who's five, six, £300 of that, hey, you're obese and you're more likely to die from cardiovascular disease. As true as that statement is, that is so wrong and so hurtful and not productive. So you can't just be Truthful and fact based alone because people are going to think you're an asshole and I'll listen to you on the flip side. You can't also not tell the truth and say that these things have no relation to disease. Now there's things with or I guess you could say they work in combination with obesity, but maybe you're independent in some regards, like depression, sleep and stress. Those things also cause cardiovascular disease, cancer, other issues as well. But to say that you being obese doesn't contribute to those things, in my personal opinion, is being dishonest. I don't know. What is your take on that? Yeah, I think you put that really well. I know a really big part of haze is just removing weight from the conversation, and that goes to what you were just saying where that can be harmful. It's beneficial and that we're not hurting feelings. But we also do have to discuss it at some point. Yes. And I try really hard. It's a hard balance kind of what you're just saying. Like in my own practice as a weight management Rd, I have to just have this chat every day, and I always do try really hard to remove weight from the conversation where I can. It's hard because I work in a weight clinic where we weigh you every single time we see you. I have it on a graph. I am always thinking about it, but I try my hardest not to complement on weight loss alone and that sort of stuff. It's more about those nonscale victories things I'm always talking about on here. Absolutely. So I think that removing it from the conversation in general is a good idea. In general. It shouldn't be the focus of anything with any client that should always be just one topic of conversation, not the focus, but removing it completely often isn't going to be. I think the best solution. I agree. Damian was talking. I just saw another component of Haze that I completely forgot to mention, but I think something the ideology shifted toward is more emphasis on mental health, and it really is trying to emphasize that your health and your wellbeing isn't just defined by how you're doing physically. And it's also a contributor is mental health, which is a really big component that I think it's kind of a nuanced topic that I feel like. At least I've noticed older generations don't put as much emphasis on us on, and it isn't taken as seriously. And I think that's what kind of the movement is trying to focus on more as well, that you can be a larger size and as long as how you feel and how you're doing mentally is okay, then you're doing fine. But that being said, I also agree that with any extreme factor in your life, there are most likely cons that come along with it. It's important to recognize them. So I think something really challenging with Haze is putting that emphasis on your mental health and being accepting of all body sizes and not making judgments about someone's health based on how they look. And removing weight from the conversation is really important. But to say that there is no correlation between how much you weigh or like not even how much you weigh because you could be like NFL players. You're saying where they have a higher body fat percentage, but that's just because of most likely the position they're playing and that's very normalized there. So it is a very challenging conversation to have, and it is important to recognize I think both sides of it almost 100%. No, completely. It's funny when I was researching to talk with you too. I remember back in Undergrad, it was probably in 2016 or 2017. I did a project. I took a weight management course that was centered around, like, obesity strategies, nutrition and obesity has always been something that I really enjoy studying. And Hannah knows I love talking about the bio psychosocial model. And through my research, I was seeing how I think as naive as I was, I thought that obesity was more so just that pure biological thing. Right. And you do read about things like certain hormones that become more or less sensitive depending on your adaptation. Oh, God. I'm blanking on the hormone right now. That is always talked about obesity that becomes harder to manage. Relin leptin. Thank you. Yeah. How I learned about that. Like, wow. So being obese, you actually feel generally more hungry than someone who isn't. So that makes it tough. That's a biological issue. Then there's also the psychosocial components. Right. Like, are you depressed? Did obesity cause your depression, or is it vice versa? Because I know later we'll talk about some things with obesity and pain. We know that 6.7% of Americans are clinically depressed and they're more likely to be obese than not. So that's a tricky part we have to deal with. And then the social factors, like, what was your family life like, how was your environment? Did your family care about fitness, or did they have the resources to care about fitness? So learning that and taking into account the mental health side, I think that's amazing that we are doing that because you're right. The older generation, you're lazy. Whatever. Yadda. Yadda. No. We're trying to get a more holistic picture because it's not as simple as just put down the fork and try a little bit harder. But the thing I do want to you know, I like that you guys are saying that, and I definitely think weight is important, but it's also important to mention it isn't always a perfect indicator. This kind of goes into, like, sometimes I hear about BMI, for example. Right. This is very time to talk about this. Bmi is not by any means perfect, right? It's a decent indicator for general health, but it only is a correlation between height and weight. It doesn't directly measure out of pocket. What we do know is that if you do a BMI test on someone, you have to look at what's called specificity and sensitivity. So specificity, meaning the people that test positive for having a high BMI, usually in research is defined as greater than 30. If they test positive, and then you compare to actually measuring their excess adoption to see if they're truly obese, they usually correlate relatively well. But the cut off is 30 overweight individuals is actually not a very good indicator. If you go from that 25 to 29.9, those individuals tend to have just as good, if not better health outcomes than people that's in the normal BMI category. So I kind of scrapped that. But for people who are 30 plus, generally speaking, you catch most people that you should. The issue is you don't catch a lot of people because it has a low sensitivity by itself. So we have this test that's kind of half good. And that's why when I work with clients and I discuss weight loss goals, if it's important to them, I also use waste circumference. Waste circumference is a quick and easy way not only for you, but the client can learn it as well to measure general abdominal adiposity. And we have pretty good cut offs. Research wise. It might vary a little bit for a few different populations, but usually for men, we want to have a waste smaller than 40, and for females a waste smaller than 35. So if I get a client and they're like, hey, I looked at it be in my chart and it says, I need to lose weight. First thing I'll say is, okay, well, first of all, if that's important to you, we'll have a conversation, we'll discuss other goals that may be important to you. Second of all, we can maybe look at your waist circumference and see if maybe that's advisable. I'm a perfect example. I'm considered overweight based on my height and weight, but my waist circumference is like 33, 34, which is nowhere near the cut up same thing if I had a client who they were overweight or maybe even towards the obese category, but they had a perfectly fine waster conference. I'm going to say, hey, man, if you really want to focus on weight loss because you think you need to, maybe we can try, but let's focus on some other goals. Maybe that are important to you because I don't really see the need to. So I kind of use it as a risk strategy to determine if weight loss is actually appropriate. I really like that because it's a component of what you're looking at, but it's not the defining factor of what their objective is going to be while working with you. Exactly. Yeah. Now I did have a question for you, too, because this is something that I'm trying to work on. I know I'm the one being interviewed, but I need help because I work with trainers, and this is kind of my strategy for determining if someone should be recommended to lose weight. I want to hear your opinion. So someone comes to us say, hey, they want to lose weight. Okay. We can do the BMI waste of conference comparison go from there. What if someone comes in and they're like, hey, I'm not really sure or I want to lose weight, but I don't know how much I want to lose. I could say what I've done historically is say, let's look at BMI in terms of the general ranges. Let's aim for the higher end, and we'll use waste circumference as kind of a check, because that kind of gives us a guide of, like, maybe ballpark if she'll be here because I don't know really how to give an exact or a decent number on that. But at least once you get the waste covers down. I can say, hey, this is pretty healthy point. Making sure they're not doing any crazy dieting or exercise is good and they feel good. I'll kind of use those as benchmarks. Do you have any other recommendations of, like someone says, I want to lose weight, but I don't know how much. Where do you go from there? That's a good question. There is this thing called ideal body weight, but I have a very hard time with it because it is literally just like for a female, for example, taking their height in inches, like, I'm five foot seven. So you take that seven multiply by five. My ideal body weight is 135. You had a 200. Sorry, I kind of like jumped ahead. So I am £30 heavier than that. And I think I'm a generally helpful person. So I have a very hard time with that. It's kind of like BMI in that way. And that it's one recommendation, and you could be either way above that or below that and still be a very healthy person. So that is one way. It's very vague. And I have a hard time saying it sometimes because everyone doesn't know how to take it. But I always kind of just say, you'll know it when you get there, we'll try our best to work towards your weight loss goals in a nice, slow, steady, sustainable way. But I don't like setting a specific weight loss goal or saying you have to hit this goal of, like, 145 or whatever it might be, because that could be way off. You just don't know until they get there and it could be something where they get to it. It's not even sustainable. It's not where their body wants to be hanging out at. So I have a really hard time setting weight loss goals in general. It's more for me about just setting short term goals one week, one month at a time. That makes sense to me. I don't have anything else to contribute to that. I like what Hannah said. So one term I remember is set point theory. If I remember correctly, is that still like a thing where your body relatively feels comfortable in the small range? And once you get there like you said, you'll know, when you're there and you'll see weight pretty much Plateau when you check all the boxes like chloride maintenance is good. Physical activity is high. Life factors, stress, et cetera are managed. This is where you are. This is probably where you're going to stay. Yes. So that is still a thing. It's actually a really big part of intuitive eating, because with intuitive eating, the goal is not weight loss. Weight gain, weight maintenance. It's about building those behaviors more so than your weight. But oftentimes with intuitive eating, you do end up. The goal is if there is a goal, I guess, for weight, it is to get to that set point weight. And again, you don't know what it is. We don't have, like, a name tag saying I'm supposed to weigh £145. You just have to kind of figure it out, which is hard. Yeah. And that's so much of science and health care in general is just trying things, seeing how it goes. But yes, that is still a thing. I follow a really cool person on Instagram a dietitian and I'll share her blog on set point weight in our description because she does really good job of describing it because it is a very interesting theory, and it's true. I actually am a firm believer in set point weight. See, a lot of people are going to hear this and think, Well, you're not saying an answer. It's like, well, this is my hand and I are cool because there isn't necessarily an answer where you can be like, it's got to be this. So I appreciate that nuanced approach. I think I piss off a lot of my patients and clients because they want me to just tell them what to do. Tell me the answer if I could, I would. I'm like, we'll just know it. We'll try these different things. I have a million tools in the toolbox, but it's also different for everyone too, which is hard because it may work for someone else, but not for you. So we really don't know. Very true. Okay. That was so great. I love that our views are all quite similar on haze and intuitive eating. I know there are more extreme views both ways, and those definitely aren't right or wrong, but it is good to have someone on the exercise side of things who does kind of have this belief as well. It's good to hear and good to see. Absolutely. I guess. Like the final point to say is I think I might have mentioned this, but it's very important to reiterate. My job is to help people find ways to become healthy in whatever Avenue they see fit. The number on the scale does not define who you are as a person. When you lose weight, your value does not go from being less to more, whether you're £300 and then you get all the way down to £200 or whatever it may be. Your value as a person doesn't change. I know from a societal standpoint that may seem different, and I understand that, but just know that that's not the case. It's about you taking care of yourself and feeling good. Yeah, exactly. I always tell my patients and my clients if you don't love yourself with the body right now, you're also not going to love it when you do meet your weight loss goals. So the journey is what matters most. Absolutely cool. So I think that leads nicely into our next topic, which will be basically about how Damon you will discuss different weight loss strategies with your clients from an exercise professionals point of view and what that might look like. Yeah, absolutely. The first one I think is important for trainers to distinguish is make sure that weight loss is actually an appropriate goal. One thing that I always tell my new trainers is this isn't to put male intent on the client. It's don't always assume your clients know what they want. There's a good chance when someone tells you what their goals are. Number one, they're in a vulnerable place. Number two, it might be the first time they're actually articulating what they want to anyone their family doesn't know. Maybe they're sniffing other doesn't know. So they've opened up to a stranger for the very first time. And I always like to say that thinking and talking aren't very different from one another. You ever have a wonderful idea? And then you talk with your friends and you realize in a kind way, they poke funny and you're like. And I really didn't think that through. It's because you haven't had the chance to verbalize it to someone who can give you some constructive feedback. So always make sure that the goal of weight loss is important. And it makes sense an easy way to ask that is, why do you think you need to lose weight? Or why do you think weight loss is important to you? Or why do you want to? And it might end up saying something else, which is like, Well, I just really want to be leaner and Toner. It's like, okay, so maybe weight loss isn't the goal. Like, do you care about the number of scale? No, not really. I just want to look fitter. Maybe you care about body composition, not weight, necessarily. So parsing that out from the beginning is great, because if you don't start with that, you might be going down this entire finished journey and realize crap. I should have probably restructured or refocused the goals from the beginning in terms of practical strategies. Okay, you found someone you think they would be beneficial to lose weight? They're on board. You guys have a good relationship. All right. Ready to go? Ready to get active? What do we do from a programming standpoint? The first thing is, as you're tracking those goals. Yes, it might be important to weigh the person, but it really is going to depend on the individual. Number one, you don't always have to weigh your client every single week. Like Anna mentioned, it's important to find other wins. How is your energy? How's your mood? How's your general relationships? How's sleep going? Do you notice that your pants are fitting? Are your pants getting bigger on you? Are you on a different notch on your belt? Do your shirts feel looser on you right? There's other things that can go away from the scale because for a lot of people, it causes fear and anxiety and they get discouraged. So using other things as benchmarks and getting as many wins as possible. It might seem silly and small. To us. But the more wins, you can check and check that's going to boost their confidence, get them excited. And then when it's appropriate for them, maybe you get them on the scale and you should be going in the right direction. The other thing, too. Even though we explain that weight loss isn't a linear process, it doesn't necessarily change how our clients perceive it right. They go down a few weeks, it goes up a pound, it stays stagnant for a week down. It does this kind of like, up and down roller coaster. When they have one of those plateaus or increases to them, they could think, what's going on. This is wrong. Waste of time, waste of money. Fuck it. I'll just go do something else, or I'll go back to that behavior that maybe wasn't the best suited for me in the past. So know that from a progression standpoint or a progress standpoint, as you say, you don't have to always just check the scale purely. The next thing is working with small behavior changes within your scope of practice. So I'll always turn to the RDS because at some point I think it's very important to make sure professionals stay in their field. We should collaborate as much as possible. But I don't want to step on anyone's toes, nor might qualify to. And I want to put my client in a bad situation. But with things that you can control having conversations about, what is your relationship with food or what are some habitual patterns or strategies that you can identify like, hey, I can't tell you you need to eat this much chicken, this many strawberries, but I can say, hey, maybe at the dinner table, try eating like half of the meal or when you feel full, don't force yourself to keep eating right. Maybe find small little strategies that you can start with. That's going to help them. And of course, intuitive eating, you can send them a link to a page, describe some of those strategies and work from there from a programming standpoint. So actually writing the workout, I'm always going to go back to ACSM guidelines. Only 23.4% of Americans roughly report getting those guidelines, and I'm pretty sure those are actually self reported, which makes it even probably worse than it is because people are saying they're more active than they actually are. So if you can get them to those guidelines in whatever way possible, as long as it's a slow, gradual progression, they're automatically going to get healthier, get more active and most likely start losing weight and seeing positive benefits. Contrary to popular belief, I would also say your emphasis should probably be on resistance training. I know that might sound a little weird because typically think weight loss cardio and there is truth to that. Cardio generally does burn more calories, which caloric expenditure and caloric burning is a big part of weight loss. However, it gets tricky because with weight loss. Things are a lot more difficult. We get hungrier. It's more difficult to put effort forward. So certain types of cardio that might have high caloric expenditure might have people perceive it as more difficult and they actually increase your hunger. Whereas resistance training. Yes, you might feel hungry after workout, but you won't necessarily feel as starving as you would if you did like a 30 to 45 minutes hit workout. Right. So focusing on resistance training is going to be beneficial for that reason. It's also great because out of the two aerobic and resistance training, resistance training is more neglected and it's understandable everyone knows how to walk. Everyone has a decent idea of how to jog. People are a little bit more fearful or not as sure how to lift weights. So it's roughly quarter of Americans less than a quarter Americans get both 50% report getting just the aerobic, less than 30% report just getting the resistance training. So it's lacking. And it has great benefits for the general population. Obesity helps with insulin sensitivity, helps with blood pressure, actually can lower blood pressure with resistance training, and it helps with body composition. I wouldn't worry about people doing too much cardio when they're overweight if they have healthy habits and they're being more active. I'm not going to say, hey, you can't go for a walk. What I will say is as they start losing weight and they start getting more into a fit routine. We do want to make sure that they are building muscle or retaining the muscle that they just currently have, which resistance training will help do. Whereas overemphasis on cardio can be a little bit detrimental in that direction. So definitely focusing on resistance training. Cardiovascular speaking, especially in the beginning, I'm going to focus on low intensity steady state training, known as list. Not to say that people can't do high intensity interval training, but just the general rules is one of those program algorithm things. I start here again lower perceived effort. In general, the intensity is going to be lower, but it doesn't seem as hard for people. If people get bored, you can get creative, like, have them go on different types of machines, have them do things they enjoy as long as their heart rates up and their RPE is up. You'll be good, right? Getting that moderate intensity range. Eventually you can incorporate hit to help burn more calories and add that creative fun factor where people are like, Damon on board of walking on the treadmill. I'm like, cool, you're doing good. Let that circuit training. Let that some hit, some high intensity interval training or some functional training. Let's find ways to get the hard rate up in a different fashion. Those are kind of the two programming things I look for and then kind of. The overall theme is maximizing enjoyment. It should be for any program, but especially when you're exercising and you're dealing with obesity. I've worked with obese clients my entire career, my short career that I have. But I have the most respect for people who bust their ass and are like carrying all that extra weight and their unconditioned. So you have people who haven't worked out for years and they're still kicking ass. So I'm going to do my best to make sure they're enjoying it to some extent. That doesn't mean it's easy, but that means that they're finding things that they like, whether it's I like a particular exercise, I like a particular style or set scheme, whatever the heck it is, make sure it's enjoyable in some fashion. And then from the nutrition side, making sure if they're talking to an Rd or if you want to give them some general recommendations. Protein and fiber are always good rules of thumb making sure protein is relatively high. You can give out that recommendation. I know various from place to place. Usually they say, like 1.6 grams per kilo up to a certain point, but I know it gets fuzzy at the top, then fiber, making sure they got a good amount of fiber as well, because it's high in satiety. I thought of a quick question and it's kind of going back to the beginning of your program. Discussion is I wanted to hear I know what the answer is, but I want to make sure that the audience also knows is what is your explanation or defense behind resistance training? If people are afraid of gaining weight and being too bulky looking because I know that is a pretty common conversation I've heard a lot often times I've seen mostly with like, College girls because we just came out of College so that's a population I'm quite familiar with. But what are your thoughts on that perception of weight training will just make me big and bulky and not help me lose weight? Yeah, that's a terrific question for the vast majority of the population. Gaining muscle mass is by no means easy. So if you're worried about gaining muscle mass, good luck. If you figure out how to do it, please let me know I could use some help. So that's the first thing I'll say, right? It's not easy that's not to discourage people, but to know that you're not just going to breathe near a dumbbell and immediately gain £10 of muscle mass. The other thing is, too. And this is kind of a weird part in the literature where a lot of information seems to be changing. But the proportion to muscle gaining and fat loss is a very confusing conversation that I'm not going to get into because I'll start getting over my head. But as you start losing weight, you can lose weight on the scale and gain muscle mass simultaneously. In some businesses, that's the ultimate goal. My body fat has gone down. I look smaller, I feel better. My clothes fit better, and I'm starting to see some definition in my body that is what is probably going to happen to a majority of people, especially when they first start training. So the fear of I'm going to get bulky, I'm going to get bigger. It's okay. I understand the fear, but it's probably not going to happen. And unless you're training in a very specific way and eating a chlorine surplus, you're probably not going to get bigger per se. You'll see more so definition and what people commonly refer to as toning or seeing more muscle protrusion. Cool. Thank you for that. That was a great question. That is something I deal with every day because I'm always trying to encourage resistance training with my patients because, like, I already demonstrated the benefits of that with weight loss. There's so many, but they're often very nervous when I first introduce it. That's the stereotype. We got to break men. Yeah, I wish that would go away. So hopefully there are just millions of listens to this podcast, and the Stair type is over to the moon. Let's go. Yeah. Okay. Well, moving on to our next question. This one I'm really excited about because we have never discussed at all on the podcast, and I know this is kind of your thing. Damian, I just love hearing you talk about this. I appreciate that. Yes, I'm so excited. So we talked about obesity. We're going to continue that conversation. But how about pain? We don't talk about that a lot on here, and I'm so excited to hear your thoughts. So is there a correlation between obesity and pain? How does that work? Why is that the way it is? What is that all about? Yeah, it's a great question. And I definitely won't go on the pain tangent here because I want to make sure I'm respectful everyone's time and for the listeners. So if you want to know about what pain is exactly, people might say, I know what that is. That's easy. I would definitely recommend to go to my website, theshipmethan. Org and look at blog post number two. And then after that, read number three, because that's a lot of conversation we're going to have right here in terms of those stats and those concepts. Because pain is a lot more tricky than just something hurts. In terms of the relationship between obesity and pain, we see a pretty solid relationship. The first thing is it's one of those like, which came first, right? The chicken or the egg kind of thing. Where is it? I'm not physically active their form and pain, and therefore obese or it's hard to determine the order. But we definitely know the things are related for a lot of reasons, starting with physical activity. Like I mentioned less than a quarter people meet those ACSM guidelines, so generally, if you're not active, right. So you're not burning calories, you might be increasing your caloric intake as well. It's going to lead to obesity. We know people that aren't physically active have a higher chance of being in general, chronic pain. That's the first thing we know that roughly 80% of the population experiences some form of chronic lower back pain. So a lot of people experience it. Being physically inactive does not help. People might say, oh, well, I'm worried about getting hurt in the gym or definitely make sure you consult a professional, but always know that there's risk with everything right. Physical activity is very safe. Even weightlifting, weight lifting is safer than most contact sports, and people have no problem having their kids sign up for contact sports. So that's something to definitely think about. We're okay with one thing, but fearful of the other, there's a risk of being inactive physically. So nothing is going to be free whether you're active or not comes with risk. So that's just definitely something to consider. Like, I mentioned stress and depression. About 6.7% of Americans report being clinically depressed, so actually diagnose, but you're more likely to be depressed if you're obese. And then we know people who are depressed have higher reports of pain and pain sensitivity. So we know that there's kind of a correlation there lack of sleep. Again, you're starting to notice a pattern how all these things are kind of related to one another. Sleep apnea is a very common thing for those who are obese. It affects the general population as well, but more so those who are obese, and we know that poor sleep increases pain sensitivity. Again, pain sensitivity being how do I explain this? If I was to give you a stimulus like, let's say, a lot of these tests are used with cold or hot stimuli. So I have you you got a good night's sleep, which is about seven to 9 hours. I take this little cold tack or whatever. Put it on your skin and you read it from a scale from one to 100. How painful that was. If I took you when you're fully rested and feeling good, you're going to report a lower number. If you got a crappy night's sleep, your body is going to be a little more sensitive to any stimulus that comes in contact with. So having sleep issues like having sleep apnea from being obese is going to make your sleep not as beneficial as it otherwise would be. And then therefore you're going to have higher pain sensitivity, which isn't a good thing. Obesity. This is one of the few times where I actually talk about inflammation because I think it's overblown with like, this diet removes your inflammation and yadda, yada. I'm sure you do hear it all the time, but true, like disease state inflammation where your body is in chronic excessive inflammation. Obesity seems to put you in a proinflammatory state where you have a lot of biological and chemical markers that say, hey, man, these markers are going to be like prothromatic, where you're more likely to clot, more likely to have issues with your heart and more likely to have inflammation that may lead to worst outcomes with pain and how you feel. And then, of course, there's kind of the obvious, which is it's an unconditioned body with more weight than it normally would have. So you're kind of having to deal with that where it's like, imagine just over time you started adding just more weight to your body and having to deal with that. Yeah, you adjust to it, but it's taxing your body and your physiology more every day. That is so interesting to me. I have a lot of patients who struggle with pain, obviously working in with the clientele that I do. I had never thought about how depression and sleep would play a role in that. That's really interesting. I always had just kind of made the correlation of you have more weight on you. So of course, that might make your bones a little bit. They're working a little bit harder. So that might be the pain. But I had never really gone much further than that in my head. But a lot of our patients do see the hospital I work for has a pain management program as well, and a lot of them do go to that program as well as weight management, because they do go so hand in hand. The hope is that and this is where it gets tricky, right? It may not matter, but let's say you're having trouble sleeping. You're an otherwise healthy person. You have trouble sleeping. Okay. My sleep is shit. So now I start eating more to give me some more positive emotion, hopefully because I cope with an eating behavior. Right. Okay. So now I'm not sleeping. Well, I start eating more. And because I start eating more, I start gaining weight. And because I'm gaining weight, I'm not without a field look, etc. Or now I'm obsessed over time. So sleep can be the catalyst, right? It could be depression. Maybe you start otherwise healthy traumatic event or just over time, you develop clinical depression. I'm depressed now. I'm not sleeping as well now, because of those two things I started using coping mechanism, and now I start eating more. It's hard to tell which one starts. What we do know is that these things tend to go together so it can't hurt to try to address one. And we know that with physical activity and good eating, they kind of all will probably hopefully start working together. Yeah. It's like a perfect little triangle. Hopefully. Hopefully. Okay. I think that's all you have, right? Yeah. Okay. The important question, right. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, David, that was so much good information. People are going to love hearing about all this. I learned a lot also. So it was just so good. I appreciate that. So yes. Like David said, now for the actual fun part of the conversation, it's always just science and weird stuff like that until the end. That's what you guys are really here for. I know. So bonus question of the day. This one's going to be controversial. I think. Are muffins really just unfrosted cupcakes? And we always let our guests go first and get their thoughts out. So Damian, let us know. Are they really just unfrosted cupcakes? Yes. So the cycle that I am and kind of like how I mentioned in the beginning, I first like, what's the definition of a cupcake? I always make sure my definitions are straight. Right. So after doing a little digging and thinking, I came to the conclusion that muffin is probably more like a bread. I had to guess it's kind of like because of the consistency and the way it's made it's like a sweet and sometimes savory type of bread. The important thing, though, is that it's not a cupcake, even if it was muffins are better anyway. So I think that's really the more important thing to get through. I'm not a huge sweet guy. I like sour. I like salty. So muffins for the wind all day being Emily's BFF for a while. I know that she has a different answer than that. So I'd love to hear Emily's point of view on that. Let's hear this. I know we talked about this right before this episode, but I've been thinking about it unfortunately, like my mind was distracted a little bit, but I definitely agree because I was going to say that it is cupcake is just a muffin with frosting, like a fun topping. Then I was thinking about like, cupcakes are normally pretty dry and have definitely that much more like lighter cake texture, whereas muffins, I'm sure warning, if you don't like the word moist,
Participant #1:
muffins are the one that's got to be bleeped out. That one. The muffins are definitely more moist. And even if they do have that top section, that if you like to take off the top like I do, the muffin top is kind of the best part of the muffin. That's not a cupcake. So I was going to originally say that muffins are cupcakes just unfrosted, but now that I've thought about it, I'm going to say that they are different too. But if we're going into which one is better, I'm going to have to go cupcakes because Hannah knows I am a sprinkles fanatic. Okay. And I will eat things just for the sprinkles. The way food looks is so important to you. It makes me laugh.
Participant #1:
Okay. Well, I was also distracted while you guys talking. Just now. I was doing some research, and for me, it's about the food science part of things. So apparently I guess I did notice, but I didn't think of it before. Cupcakes are made by creaming the butter and sugar together to create a soft, smooth, fluffy batter, whereas muffin batter is not beaten together as much. And so cupcakes have more bubbles in them. They're just like, kind of different ingredients too. So like the cooking and the preparation process is different. So from a food science perspective, they are different as well, because I was kind of the same. I was like, no, they're just frosted muffins, but I have to agree that they are not. So for the tie breaker, which is better. Yeah. I was going to say I'm a human garbage disposal, Italy anything. So I have a very hard time answering these questions. For me, it's all about my mood, too. I'm a big mood eater. Yeah, that's what I'm feeling. But if I had to pick, I think I'd go with muffin. I think I'd go with muffin. I love a crumbly top and, like, fruit and stuff inside of there. I don't like sprinkles, as you know, I don't either see it. I knew we were good people, man, I know I am a minority. You are. Sorry, Emily. Do you guys have a favorite, like, Emily, do you have a favorite cupcake? And do you have a favorite muffin? You can only take one cupcake or one muffin with you for the rest of your life. Which one is it going to be? I'm going to have to go. Carrot cake cupcakes. Good choice. Cream cheese frosting. Yeah.
Participant #1:
Maybe I'll start adding, I wonder if there are carrot sprinkles, because that would be really fine. I think there are, because this past Easter, I used them for one of my desserts that I made for. There you go. It's my ideal cupcake. Okay. I think for a cupcake, I like vanilla. That's just probably my favorite one in general. But for a muffin, I think, like, an Apple cinnamon kind of thing.
Participant #1:
What about you, Damian? What's your favorite? I'm the guy who likes nuts in my dessert. People are, like, disgusting, but I like the savory side, so it would either have to be a blueberry muffin with, like, the crumble on top, or it would have to be like, I really like zucchini nut muffin. It's really good. It's really savory, and it's mellow sweet. It's not overpowering. So it tastes really good. Yeah, I guess we're all right. Yeah, I guess so. I guess so. Well, Damian, thank you again. So, so much. It was an honor having you on today. People are really going to love hearing about all these different things. We went over, let our people know where they can find you. I know you are very active on the interwebs and great information, so let them know where they can find your stuff at. Yeah. Thank you again. You too, for having me on. For anyone who's interested in content, I'm most active on Instagram. Handle is the underscore method. I can't imagine usually daily content things for personal trainers or the general public. I also do my own podcast, as you mentioned in the beginning, so you can watch that at YouTube or on Spotify. They're both going to be the shift method or the shift at the podcast and then if you're interested in personal training, if you're in the South Florida area, I do in person buddy or group training or individual training, or I write program design too. I have clients that are in Indiana across the United States, so you can check that as well. If you are interested in personal training services, or if you want to get a T shirt, head over to the shiftmethod. Org. If you want the services, click the Take Action tab or just go to the Services tab to get yourself some merch. Yeah, I will link all that below, too. So check out those links in the description. All right, Daniel, thanks again. We hope you guys enjoy this one and we will see you next time. Yes. Thank you, everyone. All right. Bye bye.
