Work In, Not Against Your Environment

How to hack your environment to get leaner and happier 

I was listening to a podcast the other day called The Health Bridge, hosted by Dr Sara Gottfried and Dr Pedram Shojai. If you enjoy listening to Podcasts I would highly recommend this one. They work together bridging eastern and western medical principles and discuss topics ranging from weight loss, hormones, mental wellbeing, food to chemicals and pollution. Over the past few podcasts they have been discussing the “100 Day Gong” they are doing together in a bid to gain motivation and enthusiasm in their listeners to improve their health, fitness and wellbeing. The Gong is all about finding, or creating ways to work in health and wellbeing into your daily routine. As Dr Sara likes to put it “biohacking your environment.” Working it in really is so important. Life gets in the way sometimes so the better you can set your environment up to support your healthy lifestyle the more successful and satisfied you will be. 

5 Steps to “working in” your environment

1. Goals. First is to address your goals, what are you trying to improve within yourself? For example, it could be to lose weight, build muscle and reduce stress levels. The next step is to think of what you can do and how you can do it to 'work in' your environment to help you achieve these.
2. Assess your daily and weekly routine.  You need to look at specifically how, where and when can you add things to your routine that will help you reach your goals. Most people have time before work to fit something in. It could be 40 squats while waiting for the coffee to boil. It could be meditating for 3 minutes before getting in the shower. Take a look at how you can you make your work environment healthier. Standing more, walking meetings, getting out for 10 minutes during lunch, it all counts. Take a look at how your day unfolds, there are always free minutes here and there to do something good for you. 
3. Create a timeline. It does not need to be 100 days. It could be 10 days, 2 weeks or a month. The choice is yours and the key here is committing. Pick realistic goals in a set timeframe that you know you can achieve. Letting yourself down is unproductive. 
4. Hold yourself accountable or find friends. If you are doing this alone then plan mini celebratory milestones, for example after successfully working in through 2 weeks book a massage, movie or go hiking with a friend. 
5. Be flexible. Don't let a change in routine or an unexpected event cause everything to unravel. Modify and switch as needed, the important thing is keeping a level of consistency and progress will happen. 

Why Goal Setting Does Not Work

We all have things we want to achieve in life. When it comes to health it could be weight loss, gaining muscle, losing body fat or just improving fitness and wellbeing. There is so much emphasis out there on goal setting to attain success, it’s the way I was taught in school and in the workplace. We all love the idea of a big goal igniting a new found level of motivation in us, jotting down new years resolutions or joining a gym as the guarantee that those life changing things will now happen. 

The problem is that thinking about something won’t make things happen. No one gets to a goal without looking at the process of how to get there. For changes to occur in life you must first look within. This can be the hard part. Change requires mental adjustments that allow you to be open to addressing certain areas of your lifestyle. When a goal seems too large or too difficult it can be easy to blame work, family or other circumstances in your life that can make things more difficult, but not impossible. 

Setting certain goals can have a negative impact by creating a false perception of “when I reach my goal, then i’ll be good enough.”  Researches from four of the top business schools have found “in many cases goals do more harm than good.” This can place too much attention on the wrong things and puts you in a perpetual state of feeling like a continuos failure until you reach the goal. When a person feels they are failing at something it is a de-motivator, this can cause you to throw all those good intentions out the window. According to Ray Williams “The brain is wired to seek rewards and avoid pain or discomfort, including fear.”

So what to do instead?  Take the focus away from larger goals and foster an interest in building a lifestyle structure that will have you moving towards your desired image of health, wellness and weight loss. Stop thinking about the symptoms or outcomes of the problem and focus on the process, or as Scott Adam's puts it, the system and not the goal. It sounds so simple right? 

And in some ways, it is. 

Move away from those size goals, restrictive diet goals or trying the latest weight loss trend and instead start adding your own actionable systems to build a healthy lifestyle into your daily, weekly and monthly routine. As stated by Adams who is not referring directly to weight loss yet it rings so perfectly true “Beware of advice about successful people and their methods. For starters, no two situations are alike”. Just because your buddy next door lost 30 pounds on a Paleo diet or your other friend swears by training for a marathon to get results does not mean this is the path for you. 

Find Your System

Recognize your weaknesses:

Is there a time of day you find you feel is the hardest to make good food choices? Then fill that time with something else. Schedule a meeting with a colleague, go for a walk, make a herbal tea or catch up on a call or email with friends or family. 

Play up to your strengths: 

What do you enjoy that will improve your health and wellbeing? Maybe it’s walking or practicing yoga. Whatever it is you enjoy doing find the time to fit it in. Go for a walk at lunchtime or meet a friend for a walk instead of a drink. If you feel you don't have time to exercise in a studio then find some classes online you can do in 20 minutes before work. 

Break it down: 

Making big dietary changes all at once usually results in a period of dedication which slowly (or quickly) unravels as resolve dwindles . You need to address your behavior patterns which directly relates to the systems in your life. Start small, such as adding vegetables to 2 meals a day, eating a high protein breakfast or replacing unhealthier snacks with fruit or nuts. Over time the more healthy and nutritious foods you are consuming will leave less room and desire for junk. 

Build in small achievements:

Did you make it to the gym 3 days this week like you scheduled? Or did you eat vegetables and lean protein for dinner Monday, Wednesday and Thursday? Whatever systems you are successful with each week should be recognized. It could be going to see a movie or having a massage. Celebrate the small wins as they are what will get you there. 

Try new things: 

Get out and try a bunch of different activities. Get out of your comfort zone. Hiking, group classes, swimming, tennis, Pilates, social sports on the weekends, running clubs. There is bound to be something that motivates you. Keep things from getting stale by mixing it up.

Schedule activities:

Find some activities and book them in. Don't wait to do it. Recruit friends to help hold yourself accountable. 

Be honest and realistic with yourself about what can you manage to do just today or for the next week. This is creating a system and set of processes in your life that you can build on to get you to where you want to be.

Habit is what keeps you going. Start creating healthy habits and you will be pleasantly surprised at where you will end up. 

Getting Relief From Lower Back Pain

I signed up for a group exercise class the other day excited to try something new. Conveniently ignoring the niggling tightness in my lower back, hips and legs off I trotted to go command my body to perform a succession of exercises unbeknownst to me. 

The class begins and off I go, all guns blazing. Bopping and jumping about, weights flying here and there, feeling like I own the place. I’m fit right? I can handle anything… 

My inner dialogue tells me to ignore that discomfort. Any exercise is good exercise right!? Plus I really want to work off that Paleo brownie I gobbled up this morning. 

I am getting my sweat on and enjoying the music until I feel that all too familiar tweak, right around my sacrum and then YANK! There goes the global stabilizers of my lumbar spine seizing up. It feels like a ratchet has tightened a screw so tight in my lower back that now my spine has turned into a metal rod. 

I should know better. And I do. But we all need a reminder sometimes that any exercise is not necessarily good exercise. Listening to your own body is essential to have a happy and healthy relationship with fitness. 

There are some key things that I have personally neglected this last few weeks that are generally helpful in keeping your lumbo pelvic region happy and balanced so that when you do go push yourself you are prepared and ready for the challenge. These exercises are excellent in assisting in the prevention of back pain. If you are currently experiencing pain you should always consult a doctor and seek treatment from a physiotherapist or physical therapist who can prescribe the specific exercises for your condition.

Mobility

The thoracic spine is comprised of 12 vertebrae that lie mid-way through the spine between the shoulders. The thoracic vertebrae are intended for rotation mobility to allow proper movement through the shoulder girdle and for proper diaphragmatic breathing. Lack of mobilization in this area can result in excessive loading in another area of the spine. If you are very tight in your thoracic spine (hello most people who sit at a computer all day), the lumbar vertebrae can become strained, resulting in lower back pain. 

Here is an effective thoracic mobilization exercise that requires the purchase of 2 tennis balls then can be done anywhere 

Stretching

The lumbar spine needs to be able to flex and extend to allow you to bend forward and backward properly in daily activities, fitness and sport. Sitting on a chair all day, carrying heavy handbags, walking in high heels, spots and fitness can create tightness in the muscles that act on the pelvis. This tightness will begin to pull on the pelvis, drawing it anteriorly, posteriorly or laterally depending on which muscles are tight. 

If you can see a pronounced curve in your lower back (like the Donald Duck walk) then you might be in excessive anterior pelvic tilt and need to stretch the iliacus, TFL, rectus femurs, IT Band and erector spinae. Work on releasing these tight muscles utilizing these stretches.

Common for people who sit hunched over a desk all day is a flattened lumbar spine (like the Pink Panther walk) where the pelvis tilts posteriorly. The muscles needed to be stretched are the hamstrings, rectus abdominus, external obliques, adductor magnus, glutes and psoas. See this video on stretches for posterior pelvic tilt from Functional Patterns.

Stability 

Lower back pain often stems from a lack of control of the inner unit stabilizers of the spine and pelvis. These stabilizers are the deep core muscles, specifically the transverse abdominus, pelvic floor, multifidus, and the internal obliques. If the inner unit stabilizer are not working properly then the synchrony of the sacrum, pelvis and spine is thrown off. This results in the global stabilizer muscles becoming overactive to protect the lumbar spine from the unstable pelvis. Movement becomes rigid and painful. Here are a few core strengthening exercises from the Mayo Clinic to build pelvic stability.