I was very excited for Death by Food Pyramid by Denise Minger to come out. As a dietitian, I do not accept much of the common practice today as fact. I think many of the nutrition protocols we use today are built upon faulty science. Some of these faults are because of limitations in research due...
My friend Kristin Newman wrote an excellent post about the problems she sees with her clients and the kettlebell swing. Granted, she is teaching a CrossFit or "American Style" swing and I teach a "Hardstyle" or "Russian Style" swing, but the movement is basically the same from the shoulders down....
Last year I had two clients, a couple, that hired me to help them change their nutrition habits and hopefully lose some fat. They actually had ambitious goals (sub-10% body fat for a gentleman who could have voted for Hubert Humphrey is pretty ambitious), and I agreed to work with them. The reason...
Fitness professionals can be so enthusiastic about getting clients to their goals. We have all sorts of cool tricks, exercises, tips and habits to offer. Yes, eating more protein, drinking water, adding vegetables and getting exercise in are all pretty much indisputable habits to go after. However,...
By JC Deen JC Deen, also no stranger to the Coyote Point Kettlebell Club, has a hilarious style and a great system for keeping people on the path to health and fitness. His online coaching is all about “stacking the deck” to make healthy decisions easier to make until they become habit, which is...
One area of debate in the behavior-research community is the interaction between habits and goals. Wood and Neal (2007) proposes an interesting model (above) that depends on three principles that have been fairly well established in prior research: 1) “Habits are cued by context,” 2) “Habit...
Arthur C. Clarke, the famous science fiction author, is one of a small handful of people to have a set of laws named after him. Clarke’s Three Laws are simple, profound, and provide an excellent framework for understanding the the very edges of what is possible. 1. When a distinguished but elderly...
<blockquoteOne man's "magic" is another man's engineering. "Supernatural" is a null word. </blockquote - Robert A.
<blockquoteBe who you want to be. </blockquote - JC
<blockquoteGet as fit as possible while nourishing yourself — truly, deeply nourishing yourself — as well as possible. </blockquote - Krista
<blockquoteIf… participants in activities and observers of the activities focused more on good performance than on winning, the results for the participants’ motivation is likely to be far more positive. </blockquote - Vansteenkiste and Deci
This month’s book is another rare gem in pop science reading, which is to say a book written for lay people by a scientist who did most of the research in the book and who is at the forefront of his field. Brian Wansink, Ph.D. directs the Cornell Food and Brand lab and was Executive Director of...
This month's UNSEEN DEGREES is all about the environment. In this issue of UNSEEN DEGREES you'll find: An editorial about Habit-Based Coaching featuring Arthur C. Clarke and Penn Jillette A round up of articles by JC Deen and Krista Scott Dixon featuring some great habit-based coaching ideas....
My weird little career means I visit a lot of gyms. It also means I have seen a lot of gym T-shirts. Gym T-shirts fall broadly into these categories: Ed Hardy Hard-ons Inside jokes no one outside the 200 members will get The vaguely misogynist/homophobic The over-the-top patriotic Well-designed,...
As a exercise psych guy, this time of year is very busy for me. This is the time of year I get the most emails that contains the words, “goals,” “resolutions,” “core,” “tone,” “marathon,” and “pounds.” They started a few weeks ago and their numbers are climbing daily. But I have a confession. For...
I spent two years and a tiny fortune in graduate school learning everything I could about health and exercise psychology. Now that I'm out, I want to share what I've learned (and am continuing to learn) about habits, motivation, and creating environments where clients feel safe to truly and...
One of the most common reasons that people say they do not want to join a gym is because they aren’t in good enough shape. Many people laugh at the paradox in that thought, but as coaches we take it upon ourselves to understand where a client is coming from. Many people fear the judgement, real or...
By Sohee Lee Sohee, no stranger to the Coyote Point Kettlebell Club, writes on Livestrong about the struggles that every one faces with body composition and lifestyle change. Specifically, patience and delegating your energy to the places that matter. As we have learned from the great work of Roy...
Ed Deci and Richard Ryan introduced SDT in 1985 as a framework for understanding motivation and how it can enrich our lives, formalizing it in 2000. Since then, many health interventions have been created with SDT at their core. In their 2012 paper Fortier, Duda, Guerin, and Teixeira, all of whom...
<blockquoteDo what you need to do, and let the itty bitty details take care of themselves. </blockquote - Sohee